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Multiple job-holding among farm families
Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 431-442, Printed in Great Britain
1992
0743-0167/92 $5.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd
Book Reviews Multiple Job-holding Among Farm Families, M.C. berg, J.L. Findeis and D.A. Lass (eds), 350 pp., Iowa State University Press, Ames, $41.95
programs and supports, proximity to urban labor markets, and the availability of health insurance benefits associated with off-farm work opportunities, also seem to be important considerations in multiple job-holding agriculture. Without doubt the greatest factor in the rapid emergence of part-time farming has been the growing participation of farm women in local rural and semi-rural labor markets. This level of participation has been crucial to maintaining vast numbers of small and moderate-sized farms in production as well as reducing rural poverty-rates, as Deaver points out in his essay. The very diversity of parttime farming presents a number of problems for policymakers and rural development programmers, like the Cooperative Extension Service, though enhancing agricultural marketing and managerial expertise consistently rank as ‘high priorities’ in most needs assessments.
Hall-
1991,
For some time now we have come to realize that everlarger numbers of farm families depend upon significant off-farm derived capital inputs for their very survival. This volume, a collection of edited symposium papers, discusses this phenomenon in the broad North American context. Yet, as the editors point out in their useful introduction, and several authors note in their papers, multiple job-holding, often synonomous with part-time farming, is indeed a universal phenomenon, and one which can be found in both developing and mature market economies. Importantly, too, multiple job-holding, as opposed to full-time farming, has been the norm in modern agricultural history with the latter found overwhelmingly in the most affluent agricultural societies.
What is most clear is that rural development strategies aimed at job-creation, economic base diversification, and the enhancement of off-farm income along with programs to generate higher commodity returns - will all have important implications for this very crucial and growing subsector of the farm population. This collection is useful, informed by some of the very latest research in Canada (Fuller and Bollman) and the United States of America, and helps readers to understand that multiple job-holding/part-time farming is a growing, stabilizing and persistent element during periods of real change in the fabric of agricultural life and rural regions.
Seen in this way multiple job-holding is a dynamic and flexible decision system which both anticipates and accommodates change in the structure of agriculture, family needs and consumption patterns, and market realities. Many view part-time farming as indicative of a larger set of problems within modern agriculture. More than one of the essayists in this collection, however, see things otherwise and, as Paul Barkley argues, the problem may really exist among students of modern agriculture who ‘have suddenly learned that farm families earn a larger proportion of their incomes from nonfarm sources than they do from the sale of farm products or through the largesse of government farm programs. This apparently does not feel right, so a problem has been declared’ (p. 71). Yet, many real problems do exist - particularly as they relate to the larger rural community, local retail businesses, and the long-term structure of agriculture and a number of these essays reflect genuine concerns about multiple job-holding.
MARK B. LAPPING Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Home is Where the Offkze is - a Practical Handbook for Teleworking from Home, Andrew I%bby, 120 pp., 1991, Hodder and Stoughton, London, f6.99 pb
Divided into parts this collection focuses upon several themes including historical perspectives and future prospects, theoretical issues related to part-time farming, farm household surveys, which establish an empirical basis for analysis, rural labor market analysis, and public program and policy options for meeting the needs of multiple job-holding farm families.
According to the author, this book is intended to reflect the reality and not the rhetoric about teleworking and it is based on the author’s experience in a West Midland’s city and in a small town in West Yorkshire. His definition of teleworking is ‘making use of new computer and telecommunications technology to practice some form of remote working’. In Chapter 3 he advises, us that his apparently gloomy assessment of teleworking is necessary to counter the very uncritical approach of some writers.
Opportunities for and participation in part-time farming vary according to farm size, with mid-size units (sales of $40,000-249,000) showing lowest off-farm incomes, type of production specialty, with livestock - except for dairy and poultry - and fruit and nut production amongst the highest, and regional variation, with off-farm incomes accounting for the largest portion of total income on Appalachian farms and the highest average off-farm incomes generated in the Pacific region. Other factors, including the uncertain future of federal commodity
As the subtitle claims, it is more a practical handbook than a book in the ordinary sense, with some useful phone numbers for potential teleworkers in the U.K. Like most manuals for work relating to computing, one would need to have the PC functioning alongside to benefit from many of the sections. Although there is plenty of background on 431
1992
0743-0167/92 $5.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd
Book Reviews Multiple Job-holding Among Farm Families, M.C. berg, J.L. Findeis and D.A. Lass (eds), 350 pp., Iowa State University Press, Ames, $41.95
programs and supports, proximity to urban labor markets, and the availability of health insurance benefits associated with off-farm work opportunities, also seem to be important considerations in multiple job-holding agriculture. Without doubt the greatest factor in the rapid emergence of part-time farming has been the growing participation of farm women in local rural and semi-rural labor markets. This level of participation has been crucial to maintaining vast numbers of small and moderate-sized farms in production as well as reducing rural poverty-rates, as Deaver points out in his essay. The very diversity of parttime farming presents a number of problems for policymakers and rural development programmers, like the Cooperative Extension Service, though enhancing agricultural marketing and managerial expertise consistently rank as ‘high priorities’ in most needs assessments.
Hall-
1991,
For some time now we have come to realize that everlarger numbers of farm families depend upon significant off-farm derived capital inputs for their very survival. This volume, a collection of edited symposium papers, discusses this phenomenon in the broad North American context. Yet, as the editors point out in their useful introduction, and several authors note in their papers, multiple job-holding, often synonomous with part-time farming, is indeed a universal phenomenon, and one which can be found in both developing and mature market economies. Importantly, too, multiple job-holding, as opposed to full-time farming, has been the norm in modern agricultural history with the latter found overwhelmingly in the most affluent agricultural societies.
What is most clear is that rural development strategies aimed at job-creation, economic base diversification, and the enhancement of off-farm income along with programs to generate higher commodity returns - will all have important implications for this very crucial and growing subsector of the farm population. This collection is useful, informed by some of the very latest research in Canada (Fuller and Bollman) and the United States of America, and helps readers to understand that multiple job-holding/part-time farming is a growing, stabilizing and persistent element during periods of real change in the fabric of agricultural life and rural regions.
Seen in this way multiple job-holding is a dynamic and flexible decision system which both anticipates and accommodates change in the structure of agriculture, family needs and consumption patterns, and market realities. Many view part-time farming as indicative of a larger set of problems within modern agriculture. More than one of the essayists in this collection, however, see things otherwise and, as Paul Barkley argues, the problem may really exist among students of modern agriculture who ‘have suddenly learned that farm families earn a larger proportion of their incomes from nonfarm sources than they do from the sale of farm products or through the largesse of government farm programs. This apparently does not feel right, so a problem has been declared’ (p. 71). Yet, many real problems do exist - particularly as they relate to the larger rural community, local retail businesses, and the long-term structure of agriculture and a number of these essays reflect genuine concerns about multiple job-holding.
MARK B. LAPPING Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Home is Where the Offkze is - a Practical Handbook for Teleworking from Home, Andrew I%bby, 120 pp., 1991, Hodder and Stoughton, London, f6.99 pb
Divided into parts this collection focuses upon several themes including historical perspectives and future prospects, theoretical issues related to part-time farming, farm household surveys, which establish an empirical basis for analysis, rural labor market analysis, and public program and policy options for meeting the needs of multiple job-holding farm families.
According to the author, this book is intended to reflect the reality and not the rhetoric about teleworking and it is based on the author’s experience in a West Midland’s city and in a small town in West Yorkshire. His definition of teleworking is ‘making use of new computer and telecommunications technology to practice some form of remote working’. In Chapter 3 he advises, us that his apparently gloomy assessment of teleworking is necessary to counter the very uncritical approach of some writers.
Opportunities for and participation in part-time farming vary according to farm size, with mid-size units (sales of $40,000-249,000) showing lowest off-farm incomes, type of production specialty, with livestock - except for dairy and poultry - and fruit and nut production amongst the highest, and regional variation, with off-farm incomes accounting for the largest portion of total income on Appalachian farms and the highest average off-farm incomes generated in the Pacific region. Other factors, including the uncertain future of federal commodity
As the subtitle claims, it is more a practical handbook than a book in the ordinary sense, with some useful phone numbers for potential teleworkers in the U.K. Like most manuals for work relating to computing, one would need to have the PC functioning alongside to benefit from many of the sections. Although there is plenty of background on 431