Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 13 · column 6 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
less than three percent. Farm interest expenses dropped for the second year in a row. Unit production costs for most mjyor crops were hear or below those of 1983.
Net cash income increased two percent in 1984 to $39.1 billion. However, taking inflation into account, net cash income declined. Deflated net cash income has dropped about eight percent since 1980. Furthermore, net cash incomes were lower last year for producers of cash grains, cotton, tobacco, vegetables and melons, horticultural specialties and dairy products. Survey data indicated that an estimated 277,000 farms with sales over $40,000 (about a third of the farms) had negative or zero cash flow.
Last year’s sharp drop in farmland values reduced the value of farm assets by 13 percent; farm operators’ equity in those assets declined by 11 percent. This aggravated the financial problems of heavily indebted farmers. The debtto-asset ratio of all farmers increased to 23.2 percent, compared with 21.2 percent in 1980.
86.3%