IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/ajagec/v105y2023i1p219-242.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the American farm size distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine Lacy
  • Peter F. Orazem
  • Skyler Schneekloth

Abstract

This paper develops a measure of farm size as a share‐weighted sum of farm sizes, called the Share Weighted Size Index (SWSI), which introduces new evidence of farm consolidation from 1959 to 2017. Our Share Weighted Size Index provides more reasonable estimates of the entire farm size distribution than simple averages and is useful for comparing farm size across crops at one point in time or for comparing farm sizes for a given crop over time. Although previous measures have relied on confidential or hard‐to‐access farm‐level records, the Share Weighted Size Index is derived exclusively from publicly available Census of Agriculture data. Unlike average farm size, the Share Weighted Size Index reveals consistent evidence of rising farm size, the importance of returns to scale for most commodities, and the rising importance of specialization on a small number of crops within farms. Contrary to past studies that argued rising off‐farm wages increase farm size, we find evidence that proximity to off‐farm opportunities results in smaller farms.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine Lacy & Peter F. Orazem & Skyler Schneekloth, 2023. "Measuring the American farm size distribution," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 219-242, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:105:y:2023:i:1:p:219-242
    DOI: 10.1111/ajae.12318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12318
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajae.12318?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huffman, Wallace E & Lange, Mark D, 1989. "Off-Farm Work Decisions of Husbands and Wives: Joint Decision Making," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(3), pages 471-480, August.
    2. Ashok K. Mishra & Barry K. Goodwin, 1997. "Farm Income Variability and the Supply of Off-Farm Labor," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(3), pages 880-887.
    3. Jeremy G. Weber & Nigel Key, 2014. "Do Wealth Gains from Land Appreciation Cause Farmers to Expand Acreage or Buy Land?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1334-1348.
    4. Martinez, Stephen W. & Hand, Michael S. & Da Pra, Michelle & Pollack, Susan L. & Ralston, Katherine L. & Smith, Travis A. & Vogel, Stephen J. & Clark, Shellye & Lohr, Luanne & Low, Sarah A. & Newman, , 2010. "Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues," Economic Research Report 96635, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
      • Martinez, Steve & Hand, Michael & Da Pra, Michelle & Pollack, Susan & Ralston, Katherine & Smith, Travis & Vogel, Stephen & Clarke, Shellye & Lohr, Luanne & Low, Sarah & Newman, Constance, 2010. "Local food systems: concepts, impacts, and issues," MPRA Paper 24313, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Silvia Ferrari & Francisco Cribari-Neto, 2004. "Beta Regression for Modelling Rates and Proportions," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(7), pages 799-815.
    6. J. G. Tokle & Wallace E. Huffman, 1991. "Local Economic Conditions and Wage Labor Decisions of Farm and Rural Nonfarm Couples," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 73(3), pages 652-670.
    7. Daniel A. Sumner, 2014. "American Farms Keep Growing: Size, Productivity, and Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 147-166, Winter.
    8. Key, Nigel, 2019. "Farm size and productivity growth in the United States Corn Belt," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 186-195.
    9. Schimmelpfennig, David & Ebel, Robert, 2011. "On the Doorstep of the Information Age: Recent Adoption of Precision Agriculture," Economic Information Bulletin 291945, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    10. Nigel Key & Michael J. Roberts, 2006. "Government Payments and Farm Business Survival," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 88(2), pages 382-392.
    11. Robert G. Chambers & Simone Pieralli, 2020. "The Sources of Measured US Agricultural Productivity Growth: Weather, Technological Change, and Adaptation," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(4), pages 1198-1226, August.
    12. Ebel, Robert M. & Schimmelpfennig, David E., 2011. "The Information Age and Adoption of Precision Agriculture," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, pages 1-1.
    13. Huffman, Wallace E. & Orazem, Peter F., 2007. "Agriculture and Human Capital in Economic Growth: Farmers, Schooling and Nutrition," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 43, pages 2281-2341, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Pengfei & Li, Yanggu & Zhang, Wei, 2023. "Local Economic Benefits of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program: Evidence from Rural Housing Markets," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335843, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Salmon, Claire & Tanguy, Jeremy, 2016. "Rural Electrification and Household Labor Supply: Evidence from Nigeria," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 48-68.
    2. Thia C. Hennessy & Tahir Rehman, 2008. "Assessing the Impact of the ‘Decoupling’ Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on Irish Farmers’ Off‐farm Labour Market Participation Decisions," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 41-56, February.
    3. Donnellan, Trevor & Hennessy, Thia, 2012. "Defining a theoretical model of farm households’ labour allocation decisions," Factor Markets Working Papers 140, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    4. Tocco, Barbara & Davidova, Sophia & Bailey, Alastair Creation-Date: 2012-02, "undated". "Key Issues in Agricultural Labour Markets: A Review of Major Studies and Project Reports on Agriculture and Rural Labour Markets," Factor Markets Working Papers 126, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    5. Alessandro Corsi & Cristina Salvioni, 2012. "Off- and on-farm labour participation in Italian farm households," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(19), pages 2517-2526, July.
    6. World Bank, 2019. "Better Opportunities for All," World Bank Publications - Reports 33545, The World Bank Group.
    7. Rakhe Balachandran & Jerrod Penn & Maria Bampasidou, 2023. "Understanding the variation in estimates of off‐farm labour supply elasticities: A meta‐analysis," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 116-134, February.
    8. Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge & Mishra, Ashok K. & Nehring, Richard F. & Hendricks, Chad & Southern, Malaya & Gregory, Alexandra, 2007. "Off-Farm Income, Technology Adoption, And Farm Economic Performance," Economic Research Report 7234, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    9. Chang, Hung-Hao & Mishra, Ashok, 2008. "Impact of off-farm labor supply on food expenditures of the farm household," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 657-664, December.
    10. Nikolaj Malchow-Møller & Michael Svarer, 2005. "Wage - labour activities by agricultural households in Nicaragua," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(7), pages 1221-1246.
    11. Ahearn, Mary Clare & El-Osta, Hisham S. & Dewbre, Joe, 2002. "The Impact Of Government Subsidies On The Off-Farm Labor Supply Of Farm Operators," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19825, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Ayal Kimhi, 2003. "Family Composition and Off-Farm Participation Decisions in Israeli Farm Households," Labor and Demography 0307001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Donnellan, Trevor & Hennessy, Thia C., 2012. "The Labour Allocation Decisions of Farm Households: Defining a theoretical model," Working papers 137021, Factor Markets, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    14. Wang, Xiaobing, 2007. "Labor market behavior of Chinese rural households during transition," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 42, number 92321.
    15. Chang, Yang-Ming & Huang, Biing-Wen & Chen, Yun-Ju, 2012. "Labor supply, income, and welfare of the farm household," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 427-437.
    16. Corsi, Alessandro & Salvioni, Cristina, 2017. "Once part-timer always part-timer? Causes for persistence in off farm work state of farmers," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 6(2), September.
    17. S Subramanian, 2018. "Participation of rural households in farm, non-farm and pluri-activity: Evidences from India," Working Papers 412, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    18. Chul‐Woo Kwon & Peter F. Orazem & Daniel M. Otto, 2006. "Off‐farm labor supply responses to permanent and transitory farm income," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(1), pages 59-67, January.
    19. Andrea Pufahl & Christoph R. Weiss, 2009. "Evaluating the effects of farm programmes: results from propensity score matching," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 36(1), pages 79-101, March.
    20. Wang, Xiaobing & Herzfeld, Thomas & Glauben, Thomas, 2007. "Labor allocation in transition: Evidence from Chinese rural households," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 287-308.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:105:y:2023:i:1:p:219-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-8276 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.