National Agricultural, Research, Extension, Education and Economics Advisory Board Southern Regional Listening Session - Small and Family Farms: Challenges and Needs Alcorn State University, Alcorn, Mississippi

The Agricultural and Food Policy Center’s (AFPC) primary purpose is to analyze the economic and financial impacts of alternative government policies on U.S. farming and ranching operations. This is accomplished through the maintenance of data necessary to simulate the economic and financial activities of more than 80 representative crop and livestock farms chosen from major production areas across the United States. Twenty of the 41 crop farms are located in the Southern region. A brief description of these crop farms and their location is summarized in Appendix A. The economic and financial observations reported in this paper are based on AFPC’s experience with the crop farms in the Southern region. The paper is organized into four sections. The first section summarizes the process used to develop the representative farms. The second section presents the crop farms in terms of total crop cash receipts and economic efficiency as measured by the ratio of total cash costs to receipts. The third section reports the economic and financial conclusions inferred by AFPC’s experience with these crop farms. The final section addresses research, education and policy implications drawn from the analysis.