Marketplace, the public radio show about business, went to Durant, in eastern Iowa, to ask farmers about why a second or third income is an indispensable part of their lives. It’s not for lack of land. One of the farmers, Bob Lilienthal, rents 400 acres from his father “and hundreds more acres around it,” according to the story, and he raises 1,000 hogs at a time. Lilienthal and his business partner, Chad Rockow, blame high production costs, high land costs, and thinner profit margins.
Sociology professor Paul Lasley, of Iowa State University, tells Marketplace, “Part-time farming is pervasive and it appears to me to be permanent, and I think there’ll even be more reliance on off-farm income.” He says 50-60 percent of U.S. farmers have some kind of second job. Says Rockow, “It’s more like, what don’t we do?”