No abstract

A topic of considerable recent discussion is the use of high return per acre crops such as vegetables as a possible means of improving income levels on small, limited-resource farms. Though production economic analyses (those using conventional techniques such as budgeting and linear programming) indicate that farmers with small acreage might increase their income substantially by selecting vegetable enterprises, very few farmers are selecting vegetables over field crops. One possible explanation for their failure to do so is that the income from vegetable crops is more variable than that from field crops, and owners of small farms are more inclined to produce crops that will yield a lower but more stable level of income.