Why Farmers Quit: A County-Level Analysis |
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| Authors: | Stephan J. Goetz,& David L. Debertin |
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| Affiliation: | Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development,;Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky |
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| Abstract: | We identify the effects of alternative explanatory variables on the propensity of U.S. farmers to cease farming, with a particular emphasis on understanding the roles of off-farm employment and federal farm program payments. Conventional ordinary least squares analysis using all counties suggests that off-farm employment has no statistical effect on the (net) number of farmers quitting between 1987 and 1997, ceteris paribus . A more refined analysis, which separates counties losing farmers from those that gained farmers, reveals subtle and less clear-cut effects of off-farm employment (and federal program payments) on farm exits. |
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| Keywords: | economic development farm exits off-farm employment |
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