Wisconsin Family Farms Increasingly Relying on Off-farm Employment to Supplement Income

By Lorin Cox

The economic relationship between Wisconsin family farms and the rural communities that surround them is changing.

UW-Madison agricultural and applied economics professor Steve Deller said that smaller farms are struggling to generate enough income to support themselves, so families are more often turning to off-farm employment to help pay the bills.

Deller said this represents a reversal from the historical dynamic of the farm, where the agricultural operations were supporting the rural communities around them.

He joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share his latest research on the decline of family farms in the state and how nearby towns and villages support them.

The following was edited for clarity and brevity.

Kate Archer Kent: What kind of declines are you seeing in Wisconsin farms?

Steve Deller: We’re seeing, basically, consolidation. Farms are getting bigger. It’s economies of scale. There was a period in the 1980s and 1990s where it kind of stabilized a little bit, but we’re seeing that pattern of further consolidation returning.

What they’re doing is, they’re selling the herds off to other, larger farms, furthering the consolidation. So the number of milking cows is actually relatively stable. It goes up and down a little bit, but what we’re seeing is that more and more of that herd is being concentrated in fewer, larger farms. 

KAK: How is this affecting jobs and the need for off-farm employment to support farms?

SD: The traditional thought is that, for a healthy rural economy, you have to have healthy agriculture. The flow of economic benefits goes from the farm to the rural communities. But when you start to look at the financing of the farm family or the farm household, the data is really suggesting something very, very different. 

Historically, someone would get a job off-farm primarily to get health insurance. Increasingly, that off-farm income is keeping the farm afloat. It’s keeping the family afloat, and because the family is now financially stable, because of that off-farm income, the farm is able to continue to operate.