Off-farm labour and the structure of US agriculture: the case of corn/soybean farms

Richard Nehring, Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and David Banker

Applied Economics, 2005, vol. 37, issue 6, 633-649

Abstract: While the growing importance of off-farm earnings suggests large benefits accrue to farmers from efforts to expand off-farm income opportunities, economic well being also depends on greater efficiency. To comprehensively gauge the economic health of farm operator households' off-farm income is interpreted as an output along with corn, soybeans, livestock and other crops. To accomplish this task two related methodologies were used. First, using 2000 data, a multi-activity cost function was set up to analyse labour allocation decisions within the farm operator household and also to estimate returns to scale and scope. Second, using 1996-2000 data, an input distance function approach was followed to estimate returns to scale, cost economies and technical efficiency - and the relative performance of farm operator households with and without off-farm wages and salaries compared. The cost function and input distance function results both suggest that off-farm outputs and inputs can be modelled in a multi-activity framework and involve significant economies of scope.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0003684042000323582 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:37:y:2005:i:6:p:633-649

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/0003684042000323582

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().