Data - The Nature of the Farm - page 205

A.1 Description of Data Sets

1986 Nebraska and South Dakota Data
The data from Nebraska and South Dakota come from the 1986 Nebraska and South Dakota Leasing Survey .
The leasing survey was conducted by Professor Bruce Johnson of the University of Nebraska and Professor Larry
Jannsen of South Dakota State University (Johnson et al. 1988). The survey was funded by the Economic Research
Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. A summary of the study and the survey procedures can be
found in Bruce Johnson, Larry Jannsen, Michael Lundeen, and J. David Aitken, Agricultural Land Leasing and
Rental Market Characteristics: A Case Study of South Dakota and Nebraska (report prepared for the Economic
Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1988).
Johnson and Jannsen obtained a list of landowners and farmers (from the Agricultural Stabilization and
Conservation Service List of Producers) in each county in Nebraska and South Dakota that participated in, or was
eligible to participate in, federal commodity programs. (According to Steven Munk, USDA Extension Agent for
Minnehaha County in Sioux Fall, SD, essentially all farmers in these two states were eligible for federal programs.)
From the farmer-landowner list, a random sample of names was chosen; the survey was sent to 6,347 individuals
in Nebraska and 4,111 in South Dakota. The response rate was 32 percent in Nebraska and 35 percent in South
Dakota. The number of usable responses was 1,615 for Nebraska and 1,155 for South Dakota. Each observation
represents a single farmer or landowner for the 1986 crop season. For most of our tests we reorganized the data so
that each observation is a single farmland contract between a farmer and a landowner. Because many individuals
had more than one contract, this increased the sample size by 20 percent and resulted in 2,101 observations for
Nebraska and 1,331 for South Dakota.
The Leasing Survey data contain information on the general attributes of the farmer and landowner, the number
of acres owned and leased, the type of contract, the shares and cash rent, the type of crop grown, and other similar
information. The data set has no information on the levels of inputs used in farming. There are several questions
on pasture/range leases, but due to differences in the type of questions, the pasture lease data are not comparable
to that for the cropshare or cash rent contracts. There are relatively few pasture leases as well. The Leasing Survey
data were combined with county level data on population per square mile (the DENSITY variable) taken from the
County and City Data Book 1987 , published by the Bureau of the Census (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau
of the Census 1989a).

1979 British Columbia Contract Data
Data for the 1979 British Columbia landowner-farmer contracts come from the British Columbia Ministry of
Agriculture Lease Survey . This survey was conducted by the Farm Management group in the Vernon, British
Columbia, office of the ministry. The survey was done by telephone and included farmers from throughout the
province; however, farmers in the Okanagan Region were oversampled. The number of usable responses was 378.
This survey asked few questions and thus has fewer variables.

1992 British Columbia and Louisiana Contract Data

A single survey questionnaire was used to collect information for both of these data sets. Al Ortego, USDA
Extension Economist at Louisiana State University, and Howard Joynt, British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture,
both provided help in designing the 1992 survey and collecting related data. Funding for the data collection was
provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Data for the landowner-farmer cropshare contracts come from the 1992 British Columbia Farmland Ownership
and Leasing Survey , which we conducted in January 1993. The survey was sent to a random sample of 3,000 British
Columbia farm operators. The number of usable responses was 460. Data for the landowner-farmer cropshare
contracts come from the 1992 Louisiana Farmland Ownership and Leasing Survey , which we conducted in January
1993. The survey was sent to a random sample (chosen by the parish USDA County Agents) of 5,000 Louisiana
farm operators. The number of usable responses was 530. Unlike the Nebraska-South Dakota data, these data do
not have detailed information on landowners or input sharing. The survey does have information on ownership