Excerpts from the report Introduction: This report describes the debt situations of major groups of farmers at the end of 1960 and examines the role of credit, as reflected by debt, in the farm economy. Debt situations are described by showing the relationships between debts and factors such as income, landownership, and size of operations. The major purposes of the analysis are to throw light on the financial situations of farmers in various sectors of agriculture, and to determine the part played by credit in helping farmers to develop economic-size farm units and to build up their incomes and equities. The data upon which this report is based were supplied by about 11,000 farm operators who were included in the 1960 Sample Survey of Agriculture conducted by the Bureau of the Census. This survey was the first nationwide survey of virtually all kinds of farm debt in the United States (Alaska and Hawaii were not included).