Farmers displaced in economically depressed times
1988
Rathge, R.W. | Leistritz, F.L. | Goreham, G.A.
We compared the socioeconomic characteristics of a generalizable sample of displaced farm households in North Dakota with a random sample of producers who were currently operating their farming enterprises. We hypothesized that the displaced farmers would differ significantly from their currently operating counterparts in (1) the structural conditions of their operations and (2) their personal characteristics. Our hypotheses were guided by the changing structure of the agriculture literature and the adoption-diffusion literature. We obtained our data from lists of farmers who were displaced between 1981 and 1985 for financial reasons (N = 169) and from a panel of active farmers (N = 759) initially surveyed in 1985. We found that farmers displaced between 1981 and 1985 did not operate enterprises significantly different from those currently in business. Our analysis of the personal characteristics of operators revealed statistically significant differences, but these differences had limited explanatory power. We concluded that researchers should shift their attention to macrolevel variables to characterize displaced farmers.
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