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AGRICULTURE REPORT ?April 30, 2002: American Farmers
By George Grow
This is the VOA Special English AGRICULTURE
REPORT.
Two new reports offer information about American
farmers. The first report provides official information on farms and
farmland in the United States. The other gives the opinions of young
American farmers.
The Department of Agriculture reports that the
number of American farms decreased last year. It estimates there were
two-million-one-hundred-sixty-thousand farms. That is down seven-tenths
of one percent from the number reported in Two-Thousand. It was the
second biggest decrease in the number of American farms since Nineteen-Ninety-One.
Nationwide, more than three-hundred-eighty-million
hectares of land were used for farming last year. That is down about
eight-hundred-thousand hectares from one year earlier.
The other report comes from the American Farm
Bureau Federation, the nation's largest farm group. It questioned about
three-hundred farmers between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five from
across the country.
This report found that the leading concern of
young farmers was earning a profit. It was the fourth time in four years
that those questioned said making a profit was their top concern. For
the fifth year, the young farmers said international trade was important
for making a profit. Many of them said increasing agricultural exports
was the most important step the United States government could take
to help farmers.
The young farmers were divided on a question
that dealt with future earnings from agriculture. A little more than
half said their farm earnings should come totally from selling their
crops. The others said farmers also need payments from government programs.
Fifty-one percent of those questioned said they
started farming as a member of a family business. Twenty-seven percent
entered farming on their own. Almost fourteen percent said marriage
led them to farming.
On a separate issue, almost seventy-two percent
of the farmers said they or their husband or wife have an additional
job not connected with farming.
Fifty-nine percent of the young American farmers
said they are more hopeful about farming now than they were five years
ago. More than ninety percent said they believe they will remain in
farming all their lives. And, almost eighty-five percent would like
to see their children become farmers.
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