Beginning farmers and ranchers have some unique characteristics, including more education and more off-farm jobs, compared with established farmers and ranchers.

Beginning, limited-resource, and socially disadvantaged farmers make up as much as 40 percent of all U.S. farms. Some Federal conservation programs contain provisions that encourage participation by such “targeted” farmers and the 2008 Farm Act furthered these efforts. This report compares...

National average statistics related to farm production mask the diversity in the Nation's 2 million farms and the people who operate them. Farms in the United States differ not only by size (sales and acres) and type of production, but also by organizational characteristics (land ownership,...

This report is a primer on the use of debt by U.S. farm businesses for policymakers, researchers, and others interested in the financial well-being of U.S. agriculture. It presents data on basic debt-use patterns by farm businesses (in 2011, over 900,000 farms operated as farm businesses based...

When earnings decline in the face of rising production costs, farmers may find leasing and renting more attractive than owning their equipment. This-study provides information to cooperative machinery dealers and production credit associations on the benefits, drawbacks, and potential of leasing...

This bulletin furnishes farm sector financial ratio estimates developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. These estimates incorporate numerous revisions in estimating procedures and changes in available data. Nationaland State-level estimates of liquidity,...