IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ifma99/346512.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Do Net Farm Returns Compare with Returns from Stocks or Bonds?

Author

Listed:
  • Brown, Bill

Abstract

Net returns from farming as measured as income less expenses as a percentage of asset value have traditionally been low. However, when capital gain from land is added in, the rate of return is competitive with other investments available in the economy. In addition, rates of return from farming have been shown to fluctuate significantly different from net returns of other investments. This means that farmers may be able to gain by reducing their risk when investing in stocks and bonds. It has also been shown that grain farmers may be able to gain by reducing their risk by investing in specialty crops, and large scale hog and cattle operations. History has shewn that bigger is almost always better when it comes to agricultural production. The number of farms in Saskatchewan has decreased since 1936. The average size of Saskatchewan farms has increased since the first census in 1906. Overtime Saskatchewan farms have shifted from small mixed farms producing many products such as grain, cattle, milk, hogs, and poultry to more specialized and larger operations producing only 2 or 3 different crops or 1 kind of livestock. Should Saskatchewan farms get bigger and specialize more or should they diversify into specialty crops, hogs, cattle, stocks, or bonds? There is no definitive answer to this question, but the information should prove to be interesting and helpful.

Suggested Citation

  • Brown, Bill, 1999. "How Do Net Farm Returns Compare with Returns from Stocks or Bonds?," 12th Congress, Durban, South Africa, July 18-24, 1999 346512, International Farm Management Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:ifma99:346512
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.346512
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/346512/files/IFMA12_005.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.346512?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural Finance; Financial Economics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ifma99:346512. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifmaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.