Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.9
Percent of farmer-owned assets: British Columbia and Louisiana (1992)
Asset
British Columbia
Louisiana
Land
82
38
Equipment
Tractors
99
96
Harvestors
99
96
Cultivator
100
97
Planter
100
98
Trucks
99
98
Sprayer
100
98
Other
99
92
Buildings
House
99
92
Shop
97
78
Barn
99
85
Storage
98
78
Other
99
94
Sources:
Allen and Lueck (1992a) and
British Columbia and Louisiana Farmland Ownership and Leasing Survey
(1993).
puzzling feature of this observation is that much of this equipment has an extremely low
utilization rate, often being used for only one or two weeks of the year.
2.4
Individual Contract Data
The data we use to test our models come from several sources and are supplemented with
census data from the United States and Canada. Two data sets contain information on more
than 3,000 contracts from Nebraska and South Dakota for the 1986 crop year. Two additional
data sets contain information on more than 1,000 farms and nearly 2,500 plots of land (both
owned and leased) from British Columbia and Louisiana during the 1992 crop year. In
addition to information on land contracts, these data include information on the ownership of
land, buildings, and equipment. We also use publicly available data from U.S. and Canadian
censuses of agriculture. In each chapter we define and discuss the specific variables and
samples that are used, but many of the details of these data are found in appendix A. Along
with these statistical data sets, we use historical data on industries and case studies to further
test our models. To our knowledge, this is one of the largest and most diverse collections of
individual agricultural contract data in existence.
