Those working in the agricultural sector know that a lot of income coming into farming businesses does not actually come from farming.
Diversification, off-farm employment and investment income have all grown in recent years to offset the widespread fall in agricultural profits.
Defra is working on producing figures that more accurately reflect this situation and has recently published a report on farm household incomes in England for the 2004/2005 year (http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/statnot/householdincome.pdf).
The analysis is based on information gathered from 60,800 farm businesses of a minimum size of half of the standard labour requirement. These businesses actually sustain 79,000 households, because a single business might support two families, for example, a father and son. On average, farm households each drew £29,700 from their farm businesses in 2004/05. However, those same farm businesses only made a profit of £28,200 for the same period. Therefore, in
