For most U.S. farm households, income from off-farm jobs like teaching, driving a bus, or managing a bank branch helps keep an operation running.
In 2023, an AFBF Market Intel Report says 23 percent of farm household income for farm families comes from farming itself, which means 77 percent of the income comes from other sources.
In 2023, 96 percent of farm operators (the principal operator and their spouse) earned money from off-farm sources. About 72 percent of the off-farm income in recent years has come from earned sources like wages and salaries (61 percent) and non-farm business income (11 percent). The other 28 percent came from unearned sources like Social Security, veteran’s benefits, pensions, dividends, and interest.
The smaller the farm, the more dependent on off-farm employment. Among farms with less than $100,000 in gross sales, over 60 percent of those operators worked at least one day off the farm.
