Kansas study reveals farm statistics

Oct 24, 2006 1:28 PM

What’s the trend among farms? A 10-year study conducted by the Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA) provides some interesting insight. On average, Kansas farms are continuing to grow at an annual rate of 2.87% according to Michael Langemeier, Kansas State University (KSU) ag economics professor.

The KFMA program is a part of KSU Research and Extension and is one of the largest publicly funded, farm-management programs in the U.S. The goals are to provide Kansas farm families with info on business and family costs to improve farm business organization, decisions and profitability; and how to minimize risk.

In the 1996-2005 study, KFMA compiled data on 719 Kansas farms and divided the farms into four categories. The first category represented farms with less than $100,000 in value of farm production. The second category included farms between $100,000 and $250,000. Farms in the third category had a value of farm production between $250,000 and $500,000, and the fourth category included those farms greater than $500,000. The average annual growth rate of KFMA farms ranged from 1.79% in the first category to 3.82% in the fourth category.

"From this study, we discovered that medium to large farms are growing at a faster rate," Langemeier says. "And that some smaller farms, particularly older farmers, are continuing to downsize."

The average KFMA farm in 1975 was 1,350 acres and in 2005 the average was 1,850 acres, according to KFMA. This is a growth rate of about 1%/year or 500 acres over the 30-year period.

Factors that positively affected farm growth rates were farm size, non-farm income and the debt-to-asset ratio, Langemeier said. Percent acres owned, operator age, the adjusted total expense ratio and labor costs as a percent of value of farm production were associated with downsizing farms.

The average age of farmers who owned growing farms was 49 years old, while the average age of farmers downsizing was 60 years old. Farms growing at a slower rate, or downsizing, tended to spend more money on labor (about 43% of their value of farm production), but they also owned a higher percentage of their acres than the larger farms did. Larger farms spent about 14% of their value of farm production on labor.

Farms in the fourth category or farms that were growing at the highest annual rates had younger owners, were larger operations and received more income off the farm, he said. They also owned a lower percent of their acres, had a lower adjusted total expense ratio, used less of their value of farm production to cover labor expense and had a higher debt-to-asset ratio compared to farms in the first category.

"As expected, the farms growing faster had a higher debt-to-asset ratio," Langemeier said. "In most instances, it takes both debt and equity capital for a farm to grow at a relatively rapid rate. Liquidity, on the other hand, was not significantly correlated with farm growth rates."

The study discovered that debt-to-asset ratio is the most positively correlated with farm growth, while age of the operator is most negatively correlated with farm growth, Langemeier said.

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