Problèmes posés par l'utilisation des indicateurs du revenu des agriculteurs

Using farm income indicators - Very few indicators of farmers' income are available to those who have to elaborate any agricultural policy. The only one admitted by French Vth Plan and commonly used is gross income per farmer. As a matter of fact, the elements still involved in the very notion of Agricultural incomes are very complex and so is equally complex the universe of French farming. Here are suggested some problems such information underlines : — farm income is supposed to enable the farmer and his family to live and the farming itself to go on ; — this income is meant to be shared between the farmer himself and his family workers ; — National account macro-economic indicators do not display the variousness in farming ; — European accounting sample micro-economic indicators do not include « the marginal farmers » and ignore, too, « the development line » of every farm ; — quality and rapidity are both necessary to make any indicator useful.