Individualism or Cooperation: Preferences for Sharing Machinery and Labor

As a result of problems associated with high machinery costs, farmers in the United States are examining group-farming arrangements that permit them to share machinery and labor. While group-farming arrangements are more frequent elsewhere, they are infrequent in the United States. The purpose of this research was to determine which social, cultural, economic, and farm structural characteristics influence farmers to support sharing machinery or labor. The results of the one-way analysis of variance indicated that those who rent more land, have more education, are slightly older, and are more involved in cooperatives would be more willing to share machinery or labor. Finally, in a logistic regression procedure, only acres rented, education, and cooperative involvement significantly predicted willingness to share labor or machinery