Approaches to Income Improvement in Agriculture: Experiences of Families Receiving Production Loans Under the Farmers Home Administration

Report Preface: Relatively low incomes have been a persistent feature of large parts of American agriculture for many decades. The Nation’s oldest and largest farm program directed specifically toward ameliorating these conditions consists of its supervised farm credit program carried on by the Farmers Home Administration and its predecessor agencies. This program is predicated on the assumption that many of the Nation’s low-income farmers, if they are provided the credit funds and technical assistance needed for efficient farm operations, will soon become productive farmers able to continue efficient operations while relying wholly upon private and cooperative credit sources. The study reported here is directed toward an examination of the nature, causes, and possible solutions of the low-income farm problem generally. For this purpose, lessons derivable from the experiences of farmers receiving assistance under the Operating Loan Division of the Farmers Home Administration in the years 1947 through 1953 were used. The study was made possible through the cooperation of the Farmers Home Administration in providing access to records on the operations of its borrowers. It is not designed, however, to provide an evaluation of the Farmers Home Administration program; it merely draws upon the operations of farmers assisted by the FHA program to evaluate a variety of ideas as to the nature and possible solutions of the low-income farm problem as it still exists on many of the Nation’s farms. In particular, it is hoped that the results of this research study will be of assistance to those concerned with the national Rural Development Program.