Custom Farm Services in the United States, Status and Potential

G. D. Irwin and J. B. Penn

No 327290, Miscellaneous Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Changes in farm size over the past four decades have been closely associated with changes in machinery size. But an expanding range of farm sizes, existence of important economies of scale in machine manufacture, and increasing per farm and per machine financial requirements create pressures to alter this relationship. Full ownership and use of machines on each farm could give way to expanded use of custom services. Data from recent censuses of agriculture and other secondary sources are summarized. They show that custom services are a significant item, but are minor in comparison to services provided by owned machines. Both other farmers and nonfarm custom operators are important providers of farm machinery custom services. Such services are most used in the North Central and Southern regions, and in cash grain and livestock farms. All sizes of farm both use and provide custom services, but economic class I farms have the largest amounts of both. A number of forces which may lead to expansion in custom operations are discussed. Potential supplies of custom machine services from three sources are noted: (1) farmer custom operators, (2) custom operators not engaged in farming who provide either use of individual machines or complete farming operations, and (3) machinery dealers or others who provide short-term rentals.

Keywords: Agricultural Finance; Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management; Labor and Human Capital; Livestock Production/Industries; Production Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60
Date: 1975-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/327290/files/ERS-583.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:uersmp:327290

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.327290

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Miscellaneous Publications from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().