Profitability of Family Farms

Family farms prevail in Croatian agriculture with majority of resources and production and according to experiences of developed countries we consider family farm income as a crucial matter for their development. As a step in solving this problem a long term project "Farm Survey" has been started at national level, based on theoretic issues and methodology of farm and agricultural statisticsfrom EV and FAO systems as well as on our previous experience. Survey has been carried out on 892family farms as a representative sample. Intention is to develop the project to the level of continuous farm business monitoring system in Croatia. First results show the majority of surveyed households with family fanns have some additional activities beside farming. Average value of the farm assets is US$ 112,000 with 9.93 ha of used land. All family farms generate US$ 13,207 of revenues from agriculture in average while costs amount to US$ 9,984 per year. Gross income from farming amounts to US$ 3,223 in average and net income of household totals US$ 8,529. It is more than obvious that household income is in more than 50% compound of income outside agriculture. Profitability measured by relation of gross agricultural income and farm value is 3,88% in average, while net household income reaches 13,17% of totalfarm value in average.