Farm Income Variability and Off-Farm Diversification in Canadian Agriculture
Simon Jette-Nantel,
David Freshwater,
Martin S. Beaulieu and
Ani Katchova
No 56497, 2010 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2010, Orlando, Florida from Southern Agricultural Economics Association
Abstract:
For a majority of farm families and operators in OECD countries, off-farm or non-farm occupations have become a significant source of income and a major determinant of their well being. This study investigates the use of off-farm employment as a risk management tool by farm operators. A two-part model is developed to estimate the impact of farm income risk on the decision to participate in the off-farm labour market and the level of off-farm employment income. Longitudinal farm level data for about 30,000 Canadian farms from 2001 to 2006 are used for this study. The variability of farm market revenue is found to positively affect the likelihood of off-farm work and the level of off-farm employment income, in particular for operators of larger commercial farms. The apparent ability of a significant number of operators of large farms to increase their resilience and coping capacity through off-farm employment income suggest the presence of substantial interactions between off-farm income and farm income stabilization policies. Consequently, the focus of agricultural policies on risk management and income stabilization reinforces the linkages between rural and agricultural policies. In particular, it appears that policies designed to facilitate access to off-farm work or to enhance off-farm opportunities, such as rural development programs, could contribute to achieve some objectives underlying agricultural income stabilization programs. These results reinforce the need for coherent rural and agricultural policies, and raises questions about the desirable balance between placed based rural policies and sector specific agricultural policies.
Keywords: Agricultural; Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)
Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/56497/files/SAEA2010_sjn_df.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:saea10:56497
DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.56497
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in 2010 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2010, Orlando, Florida from Southern Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).