Economic Returns to Farming for U.S. Farm Households

by Daniel Prager, Sarah Tulman, and Ron Durst

Slightly more than half of U.S. farm households report losses from their farm businesses each year. But net income measures do not capture the full contribution farming makes to the financial well-being of farm families. When tax-loss benefits and asset appreciation are considered, the share of households with positive annual farm returns rises from 43 to 70 percent.

Keywords: returns to farming, farm income, income tax, depreciation, returns to labor and management, family farms, farmland values, farm households, Agricultural Resource Management Survey, ARMS

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