Farm succession by the “next generation” is a key factor in the determination of industry structure and the total number of farmers and has profound implications for farm families which rely heavily on intergenerational succession. Our results indicate that, in addition to farm, operator,...

This study uses a financial approach based on the DuPont expansion to examine the significance of specialization and vertical integration on domestic agriculture. The traditional DuPont Expansion decomposes the rate of return to equity into asset efficiency, gross margins, and solvency. We...

More than 50 percent of current farmers are over age 55, and the number of new farmers replacing them has fallen. This paper examines factors that contribute to the financial performance of new and beginning farmers in the U.S. A weighted regression analysis was used on data from the 2005...

The retiring farmer generally tries to balance the desire to keep the farm intact as a going concern with the need for a secure assets portfolio to finance retirement. This problem becomes more complex in situations where younger family members choose not to be active in the farm business....

Fewer farm operators rely on borrowed funds, but farm debt is increasingly concentrated in larger farms.

This paper is an assessment of patterns of investment by farm households via an econometric model adapted from a land allocation approach of Holt (1999). This analysis will shed light on the importance of different classes of assets to farm household well-being, and show the reaction of farm...

This paper examines how off-farm work affects the economic performance of crop and (selected) livestock farms. It estimates returns to scale and technical efficiency following an input distance function approach and compares the relative performance of dairy and corn farm operator households...

Off-farm work improves and reduces the riskiness of household income. Theoretical analyses reveal that the level and riskiness of off-farm income affect demand for farm/nonfarm investments. A two-limit Tobit model is estimated using ARMS data for 1996-2003. The impact on investment behaviour is...

More than 50 percent of current farmers are over age 55, and the number of new farmers replacing them has fallen. This paper examines factors that contribute to the financial performance of new and beginning farmers in the U.S. A weighted regression analysis was used on data from the 2005...