For most U.S. farm households, income from off-farm jobs like teaching, driving a bus, or managing a bank branch helps keep an operation running.
According to a new AFBF Market Intel Report, it says in 2023 that 23 percent of farm household income for farm families came from farming itself, which means 77 percent of the income came from other sources. In 2023, 96 percent of farm operators (the principal operator and their spouse) earned money from off-farm sources. About 72 percent of the off-farm income in recent years has come from earned sources like wages and salaries (61 percent) and non-farm business income (11 percent).
The other 28 percent came from unearned sources like Social Security, veteran’s benefits, pensions, dividends, and interest. The smaller the farm, the more dependent on off-farm employment. Among farms with less than $100,000 in gross sales, over 60 percent of those operators worked at least one day off the farm.
Off-farm income trends also differ widely by farm type, reflecting varying labor demands, availability of automation, production schedules and income volatility across commodities according to the American Farm Bureau. Dairy farm households are the most reliant on income earned from the farm itself — with 81% of their household income in 2023 coming from farming activities. That’s a stark contrast to other specializations: for corn farmers, 58% of income came from on-farm sources, while cattle producers reported only 10%, and other field crop operations just 9%.
SOURCE: NAFB News Service and AFBF Market Intel
