Lecture objectives
        •  Identifying concerns about farm income
            – The resources/returns square
        •  Measuring farm incomes
            – Macroeconomic sources
            – Microeconomic (survey) sources
        •  Assessing farm incomes in Ireland
            – Farm household living standards
            – Are farmers poor?
            – What about returns to farming?
        •  Distribution of support to farming
                                            
                           Farm income concerns
     •  Dimensions of the farm income problem
         – poverty (income adequacy), comparability (income parity), income instability
     •  Income adequacy – are farmers poor?
     •  Income parity – do farmers earn less than the going rate on the resources 
        they employ?
     •  Income stability – are farm incomes particularly volatile?
                       Parity--          Greater than parity              Less than parity
           Welfare
           Above the poverty                  Well-structured                Large but low-
           line                             commercial farms                 yielding farms
           Below the poverty                 Productive small            Marginal farms, both 
           line                             farms with limited            poor and inefficient
                                                 resources
                                                        
           Uses of farm income statistics
      • To measure trends in farm income over time
      • To make welfare comparisons between 
        farmer and nonfarm populations
      • To estimate the number of farmers living in 
        poverty
      • To examine the efficiency of resource use in 
        agriculture
                                
            Sources of data on farm incomes
        •  Macroeconomic
            – Economic accounts for agriculture
            – Combine with data on sources of labour input (LFS vs AWU)
            – Limited to averages/useful for showing trends over time
        •  Microeconomic
            – National farm surveys (Teagasc)
            – Household budget surveys (CSO)
            – Good for showing differentiation within the sector/may not be 
               fully representative
                                            
           Eurostat Income Indicators
                          Operating surplus