| Popis: |
As farming technology in North America continues to advance and relative prices of farm products and farm inputs change, there is continued downward pressure on the real incomes of producers who do not make appropriate adjustments. As in the past, such producers frequently have relatively limited resources, even though the resource base and scale of farm operation of those currently in difficulty is typically larger than it was a decade ago. In Canada, approximately one-third of the country's 300,000 farmers had net taxable incomes of less than defined poverty levels in 1974 (Darcovich et al.). Of these, about 62,000 relied primarily on farming for their livelihood. The majority (85%) of this group had farm product sales of less than $25,000. Such a producer typically faces four options-give up farming and take up nonfarm employment, develop his farming business into a larger and more prosperous enterprise, combine farming with off-farm work or some nonfarm business activity, or continue to operate his farm much as he has done in the |
