How economic conditions changed the number of U.S. Farms, 1960–1988: A replication and extension of Gale (1990) to midsize farms in the United States and abroad

Abstract

We replicate and extend the analysis of Gale (1990) to provide insight into the role of economic conditions on farm distributions in the United States and abroad. Our underlying hypothesis is that the effects of the economic factors on the change in farm numbers remain the same (direction wise) for different times, farm sizes, and countries/regions. We investigate the role of economic conditions on the disappearing middle farms.We extend the analysis to include the time period 1960-2020 and more economic factors, estimate the models by farm size categories, using seemingly unrelated regression, and apply it to international settings (Brazil and the Eurozone). We find no evidence to support the disappearing middle farm hypothesis, despite a declining trend in the number of US midsize farms. The role of economic factors changes according to farm size and country. Economic factors (e.g., population, financial stress, and infrastructure) are important to explain the increase in small and midsize farm

Limits to capital: Assessing the role of race on the Paycheck Protection Program for African American farmers in America

“…In rural counties, operating in smaller farms may restrict their revenues, as they may be competing with larger farms with greater economies of scale and access to capital. U.S. small farms depend on off‐farm income (Sant'Anna & Katchova, 2022), and being in rural counties may limit their employment opportunities off the farm. In contrast, small farms in urban counties may have more access to off‐farm income opportunities and to marketing higher‐value produce (Evans & Ngau, 1991).…”

Replications in agricultural economics

“…The work by Sant'Anna and Katchova (2023) “How Economic Conditions Changed the Number of U.S. Farms, 1960‐88: A Replication and Extension of Gale (1990) to Mid‐Size Farms” concerns Gale's (1990) investigation of economic conditions that affect the number of US Farms. The authors repeated the data preparation done by Gale (1990) and found notable differences between summary statistics of some of their variables and the corresponding summary statistics published in Gale (1990).…”