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Abstract
Farmers have many options for choosing
equipment that is required to grow and
harvest a crop. Farmers may own their
own equipment, lease it, or have the
field operations completed using custom
operators. For those farmers who choose
to own most of their equipment, there
are additional decisions about the size
and quantity of equipment needed. This
paper uses a 15-year dataset of farm
financial data from the Kansas Farm
Management Association (KFMA) to
examine how depreciation, machinery
repairs, and the use of custom operators
vary by farm profitability quintiles.
Results indicate that the most profitable
farms also have the highest levels of
depreciation but that the machinery level
is probably not excessive.