Farm Horizons
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Aug. 8, 2016
and possibly long-term care insurance must also be paid.
The average farm family spends about $8,000 per year
for meals and groceries, with another $4,900 spent for
household supplies. Other family living expenses include
clothing, personal care, personal vehicle expenses, household repairs, education, and recreation expenses. This is
in addition to the interest paid for personal items and other investments such as savings and retirement accounts.
I have listed a lot of numbers in this article, not to impress you with the amounts spent by an average farm, but
to show you the impact that one farm has on the community at-large. When you multiply this by 100 farms,
it demonstrates how Main Street businesses rely on the
farming community. Farm size varies greatly and it can
be misleading to use average expenses to cover all farms,
but in an article like this, the averages are useful to explain how one farm is an economic development engine.
Many cities hire economic development positions to
bring more businesses to their community. Politicians
spend entire lifetimes talking about economic development and what the government should do to improve it.
What if we looked at what is already in our communities?
What if our communities supported the farming community, and encouraged more farm businesses? What if we
all worked together to strengthen the community?
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An average farm invests a lot of money into the community and deserves to be supported. This support also
means that we, as farmers need to be responsible when
we farm the land, raise livestock, and sell grain.
We can reduce the impact of a farm down to pure numbers, but we also need to consider the other impacts that a
farm can have on a community. We can serve on church
boards, school boards, and other committees. Farms have
a civic responsibility, too. As a former governor used to
say, “It takes a community,” and we are all a part of that
community.
So hopefully, this explanation of what dollars an average farm invests back into the community in various
ways will help you to understand the investments that a
farm business makes every year.
Agriculture and the related businesses employ a large
percentage of the population. So, if you look at economic
development, it is difficult to find a segment that offers
more opportunities than agriculture. Agriculture covers
many different types of farming and includes several
occupations that directly rely on agriculture, along with
many occupations that are indirectly connected to agriculture. Economic development and agriculture, makes
sense. n