Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 4:40 PM
149-15
Organic Farming Practices, Coss, and Profitability: New USDA Survey Data.
Despite rapidly expanding organic cropland (certified organic cropland doubled between 1997 and 2005), U.S. organic production has not kept pace with consumer demand. Farmers have consistently pointed to the lack of reliable economic information on organic production as one of the obstacles to organic conversion. In 2006, USDA began adding an oversample to the annual Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) targeting organic producers, in order to provide statistically reliable data on the organic sector. ARMS integrates farm business and household accounts, and is USDA’s major source of economic information on U.S. farms. ARMS data provide a direct linkage between commodity production practices (including conservation) and the financial status of the farm and its operator's household. The data also provide insights on the organization and performance of farms, the income and well-being of farm households, and the economics of production practices used across commodity enterprises. Information collected in the survey can be used to examine the effects of economic or policy events on farms and farm households. An organic oversample has been developed for one commodity in all three major farm sectors (livestock, field crops and specialty crops). Organic dairy farmers were surveyed, along with conventional producers, in the survey administered in 2006, organic soybean producers were surveyed in 2007, and an organic apple survey in under development. Data from these surveys enables a side-by-side comparison of the production costs, profitability, environmental performance and structural characteristics of organic and conventional farms. Initial results from the ARMS dairy survey will be presented in this paper, comparing the production costs of organic and conventional dairy producers.
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