According to a recent study by the University of Missouri, American farmers and producers are becoming more dependent on income sources outside of their farms.
The research concludes that 82 percent of farm household income now comes from off-farm.
Rob Fox with CoBank says that while the number is high it doesn?t mean that people have left rural areas to go to urban areas. He says rural economies are more diverse now.
Currently 6.5 percent of workers in rural counties are employed in agriculture, compared to 15.4 percent in 1970.
Fox says the latest numbers go through 2018, but he thinks the rural economy is on a bounce back.
That is Rob Fox, director of CoBank?s Knowledge Exchange division.
