Farmers are stereotypically portrayed as poor, but how poor is the average farmer?
Indeed. Frequently in deep debt for the purchase of newer equipment to run the farm. Tractors and combines are not cheap.
In the US, "farmer" refers to an owner or family member of the owner of a family or industrial farm.
Farmers are not only not poor, they are rich. The average family farm is an enterprise worth a lot of money. Many of them have most of their assets tied in their farm, but "rich but my assets are being used to make me more money" is just ordinary rich.
FarmHANDS, and agricultural laborers, especially immigrant farm laborers, are extremely poor. We just don't call them "farmers".
The issue is that the assets don't actually make them a lot of money. If it costs you a few million dollars to operate your business, and it generates only a couple of thousand over that, you are not materially better off than someone earning mininum wage.
There are some farmers that don't make a lot of money on their investment but the average income in the demographic is quite high. They are definitely not "poor", and they own the means of production so they aren't middle class either.
Average income, that's cute, now do average expenditures. High revenue/low profit is the norm for most farmers.
You should visit the farms in Richmond BC, everyone one of them has the biggest insane mansion you have ever seen.
Considering most farmers in my country would be the industrial scale ones, I'd say no. Though their wealth is more in the land as farming equipment is extremely expensive.
In the area I grew up anyone still farming or taking over the family farms is running a $5-100 million dollar operation at this point.
It depends on the particular type of farm, the product(s) and size. A family apple orchard that only draws from about an hour radius will have land and equipment, but very little for cash on hand. It sort of goes in cycles. There will be the poor season when you're buying stuff for next year on credit, then paying it off with the harvest. If the crop fails, though, you're screwed.
Farmers are hood rich. They have a lot of stuff (in their defense they literally need it) that if you added it all up would come to millions (a lot of it is financed, they don't actually "own" it) - but the costs of running a farm are astronomical and their profit margins are razor thin, so they don't actually have a lot of disposable income.
The farmers I know are hard-working, passionate about turning the land into something viable, and very strategic in how to do that year after year. They are also bringing in well over six figures after selling crops, and are regularly investing in equipment and/or various upgrades to their enterprise.
In other words, farmers tend to do quite well for themselves and their families, but it doesn’t come without a ton of long days and sacrifice.
As a former farmer myself, I can see I didn’t care as much about money, when you live like that you forget about all society and industrial gimmick and you connect with nature
No. This isn't 1920. Most of them are profitable businesses or enterprises.
Either that, or more on the hobby side of things and less interested in turning a large profit.
It can be like any business that may fail or struggle though, but they aren't all poor or else why would they be doing it?
Usually because they're passionate about it and someone has to. I spent a few years in a land-based role that paid barely above minimum wage despite requiring labour on par with a physical trade like construction, and it was those two things that kept me going. Especially the second one - the team I worked with were the dividing line between a fragile status quo and a localised ecological collapse. I couldn't keep it up forever, but I remember the mindset I had and a lot of farmers I meet are the same way.
Land rich. Cash poor.