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Comment by PopAlongKid | Hacker News Reader

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PopAlongKid·

The most meaningful statistic I found in the article is

>Small family-owned farms accounted for 19% of the value of all agricultural products sold in 2017

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So the 4% of total number of farms accounts for 81% of value of all agricultural products?

No, there are also mid-size and large-scale family farms. Many of those are owned by corporations, but that corporation is owned by a single family so it counts as a family farm. "Small" is defined as gross income of $250,000 or less.

A gross income of 250,000 isn't a small farm, it's a hobby farm. The average margin for farms is 15%, and smaller farms are worse than large farms. A $250,000 gross likely means a <$20K net, and you can't support a family on that in America even if you grow your own food.

Worse than the small margin is the variability. A good year can have a 50% margin and a bad year a -25% one.

Where is the $230k going here?

Fuel, seed, fertilizer, herbicide, equipment maintenance, rent or interest, et cetera.

Page down a couple pages on this PDF, and they have a great breakdown for each crop:

https://www.saskatchewan.ca/business/agriculture-natural-res...

Do those not fall under COGS and would have already been accounted for in gross income?

The metric used here is "GCFI" which does not include expenses. The small farms are not primary occupations. Here is a more useful description:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-structure-...

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