Outline
        •  What are 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
        •  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-yielding 
        line                       commercial farms              farms
        Below the poverty       Productive small farms    Marginal farms, both 
        line                     with limited resources   poor and inefficient
                                            
                             Measuring farm income
        •  Dimensions of the farm income problem
            – poverty (income adequacy), instability (income stability), comparability 
               (income parity)
            – conceptualising farm problems using the farm welfare/resource returns square
        •  Aggregate income derived from the agricultural accounts calculated 
           on a ‘national farm’ basis (CSO Economic Accounts for 
           Agriculture)
        •  Different income concepts are used
            – net value added, income from self-employment in agriculture, net farm 
               income
        •  Dividing aggregate farm income by the numbers engaged to obtain a 
           measure of the health of the farming sector
                                                   
                  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