ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates wealth patterns across regions and farm sizes in an effort to gain insights into the future financial prospects for American agriculture as a whole, or at least for some agricultural industries. Also, relationships between the components of wealth and farm household decision making are assessed. There are two general objectives of this chapter. The first objective is to derive a system of equations that explain the inter-linkages between the various components of a farm house-hold's wealth at some point in time. The second objective is to use those equations to empirically assess income and wealth patterns across regions and farm sizes. This will generate implications about future economic performance expected across sectors of US production agriculture. The spatial and temporal patterns in profits were identified using aggregated data and the farm-level data are used to evaluate profit and wealth performance across farm sizes and locations.
