Changes At The Urban-Rural Interface: The Contribution Of Off-Farm Work By Farmers

A common characteristic of rural change in most countries has been the net flow of human resources from the farm to the nonfarm sector. Off-farm work by farm family members has been identified as an important factor influencing this flow (Baumgartner; Hathaway, 1960 and 1967; Hathaway and Perkins, 1968a and 1968b; Kaldor and Edwards; Perkins, 1973; Perkins and Hathaway; and Szabo.) The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelationships between off- farm work and entry to and exit from farming. Data are drawn from a longitudinal micro data file on Canadian farmers from the 1966, 1971, and 1976 Censuses of Agriculture (table 1). The data are ideally suited to the study at the micro level of the impact of off-farm work on the movement of farmers to the nonfarm sector. The first important point to note is that the relatively small change in the number of farmers between census periods is comprised of a surprisingly large rate of gross entry and gross exit. From 1966 to 1971, the number of census farm operators in Canada declined by 64,397 (14.9 percent), which was due to a gross exit of 152,354 (35.4 percent of the 1966 number of operators) and a gross entry of 87 ,957 (which was 24.0 percent of the number of 1971 operators) (table 2). Similarly, the net change in the 1971 to 1976 period was a decline of 27 ,527 (7 .5 percent) which was due to a gross exit of 129,922 (35.5 percent of the 1971 operators) and a gross entry of 102,395 (30.3 percent of the 1966 operators). Thus, the number of gross entrants and gross exiters is so large that the determinants of both gross entry and gross exit must be understood in order to comprehend the changes at the urban-rural interface. The analysis of this paper is constrained to the impact of off-farm work.