Farm earnings improve when land and assets taken into account
The financial health of farms is commonly demonstrated through its net income, or a farm household's financial losses or gains over the course of a year. According to those metrics, each year just over half of the U.S.'s 2 million farms report negative income. But a new report from the USDA's Economic Research Service uses a wider scope—including asset appreciation, unpaid labor, and tax benefits from farming—to assess the economic state of the country's farms in 2015.