Off-Farm Income a Major Component of Total Income for Most Farm Households in 2019

Off-farm income—such as pensions, investment income, or wages and salary from an off-farm job—is an important source of total income for U.S. farm households. In 2019, 96 percent of farm households derived some income from off-farm sources. On average, off-farm income contributed 82 percent of total income, or $101,638, for all family farms in 2019. Smaller farms tend to rely more on off-farm income than larger farms. On average, small family farms, those with an annual gross cash farm income (GCFI) under $350,000, derived more than half of their total household income from off-farm income in 2019. By comparison, on average, very large farms, those with a GCFI of $5 million or more, earned 7 percent of their total income from off-farm sources that year. However, those are averages, and some households operating small farms rely primarily on farm income, while some households operating larger farms rely on income from off-farm sources.