Characteristics of Women Farm Operators and Their Farms

Economic Research Service, USDA Characteristics of Women Farm Operators and Their Farms, EIB-111 13
Returns to Women-Operated Farms
We examine farm profitability using the rate of return on equity, a commonly used
profitability measure that compares net farm income with the net worth of the
farm. In the case of unincorporated farms, net farm income is reduced to reflect the
opportunity cost of management and of operator and unpaid labor.
Women’s Smaller Farms Lead to Lower Returns
Returns to farming typically increase with sales, as shown in figure 6, reflecting the
low farm earnings for households operating farms with sales less than $100,000. The
positive relationship between returns and sales is most apparent for all farms and for
men-operated farms. The relationship also occurs for women-operated farms, with
one exception: the rate of return for women-operated farms does not increase as sales
increase to the $250,000 to $999,999 level. Most of the women-operated farms in
that sales class are livestock farms—largely poultry operations—and those womenoperated
livestock farms collectively experienced a -3.2-percent rate of return on
equity in 2007. The number of women-operated farms in the sales class is quite small,
however, accounting for only 2 percent of all women-operated farms.
Overall, the rate of return on equity is lower for women (-2.7 percent) than for
men (1.4 percent). This is largely the result of the heavy concentration of women
on farms with sales less than $10,000, which have the lowest rates of return.
Approximately 80 percent of women operate farms that small, compared with only