Project carried out under the research call “Farmers’ income: measures, determinants and support instruments” issued by the Centre for Studies and Strategic Foresight (Centre d’études et de prospective) of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
Analysing farmers’ income requires taking into account its composition (farm sources, off-farm sources, public support), its level (per farm, per annual work unit, per household), its dispersion (across farmers, across production systems) and its evolution (in the short and long term). The first objective of the Agr’Income project is therefore to review the various definitions of the concept of “farm income”, along with the indicators and sources commonly used to characterise and quantify it, and then to describe as precisely as possible the diversity of French farmers’ incomes. The second objective is to analyse the technical and economic determinants that shape the income generated by farms, and the trade-offs between immediate remuneration of labour and deferred remuneration through the build-up of assets. Third, the project aims to examine the extent to which certain CAP income support instruments actually and consistently achieve the policy objectives set for the convergence and redistribution of payments, and whether this type of income support is compatible with the simultaneous pursuit of environmental objectives.
Participants:
Data: Among the various data used in the project, pseudonymised personal data from the French Farm Accountancy Data Network (Rica, the French FADN) and from the non-salaried contributor files of the Central Fund of the MSA (the farm sector’s social security agency; COTNS) were made available and processed on the Secure Data Access Centre (CASD), after approvement by the Statistical Confidentiality Committee.
Task 1: Definitions of farm income and their uses
Scientific lead: Aude Ridier
This task examines the relevance of the various income indicators depending on how they are used. Its aim is not so much to revisit the definitions of the indicators themselves as to identify which observer(s) use which concept(s), for what purpose(s), and based on which data.
- Laroche-Dupraz C., Ridier A. (2021)
"Le revenu agricole : une multiplicité d’enjeux, de définitions et d’usages" [Agricultural income: Multiple issues, definitions, and uses]
Economie Rurale, 378: 19-36. - Piet L., Chatellier V., Delame N., Jeanneaux P., Laroche Dupraz C., Ridier A., Veysset P. (2021)
"Mesurer le revenu des exploitations agricoles françaises : analyse comparée sur 15 ans d’indicateurs issus du Rica et de la MSA" [Measuring the income of French farms: A fifteen-year comparative analysis of indicators from RICA and MSA]
Economie Rurale, 378: 37-56. (See also SMART-LERECO Working Paper No. 21-06)
Task 2.1: Income inequality among French farms
Scientific lead: Laurent Piet
This task aims to characterise income inequality among French farms. Computing indicators commonly used to measure income and wealth inequality, such as the Gini or Theil indices, the share of total income held by the highest-earning farms, or the interquartile gap, will make it possible to identify the best- and worst-endowed categories of farms according to various criteria (regions, types of farming, etc.) and to analyse how these inequalities evolve over time.
Task 2.2: Trends in farm and off-farm income of French farmers
Scientific lead: Nathalie Delame
This task aims to develop and validate a method for producing annual estimates of the total income of farm households, which are currently produced only at long intervals. This will allow an analysis of how the share of farm income in the total income of farm tax households has evolved, on average and by type of farming or by region.
- Delame N. (2021)
"Revenus agricoles et non agricoles des agriculteurs de 2003 à 2016" [Farm income and non-farm income of farmers from 2003 to 2016]
Economie Rurale, 378: 77-95.
Task 2.3: An alternative typology for analysing the diversity of French farm incomes
Scientific lead: Vincent Chatellier
This task aims to capture the heterogeneity of French farm incomes from a perspective that complements the usual approaches, which most often cross types of farming (OTEX), economic size classes (CEDEX) and regions. The proposed alternative typology is based on three indicators assumed a priori to influence income levels: labour productivity, productive efficiency and the debt service burden.
- Chatellier V. (2021)
"L’hétérogénéité des revenus des actifs non salariés au sein de l’agriculture française : un regard au travers de deux grilles typologiques" [The heterogeneity of income per non-salaried worker in French agriculture: A look through two typological grids]
Economie Rurale, 378: 57-75. (See also SMART-LERECO Working Paper No. 21-05) - Chatellier V. (2024)
"Le revenu agricole des agriculteurs et des éleveurs en France : une forte variabilité interannuelle (2010-2022) et de grandes disparités" [Farm income for farmers and livestock breeders in France: high inter-annual variability (2010-2022) and major disparities]
INRAE Productions Animales 37(3): 8281 - Chatellier V. (2025)
"Le revenu agricole dans les exploitations d’herbivores en France : évolutions et dispersion selon les systèmes fourragers" [Farm income on grazing livestock farms in France: trends and dispersion according to forage systems]
Fourrages, 263: 5-19
Task 3.1: Productivity gains and profitability of French ruminant farms
Scientific lead: Patrick Veysset
This task aims to analyse partial and total factor productivity, as well as the efficiency and profitability of cattle (dairy and beef) and sheep meat farms since the early 1990s. Beyond measuring productivity gains, studying the determinants of how these gains are generated and distributed among economic agents will make it possible to compare the evolution of farmers’ income with the price advantages captured by the economic agents they interact with.
- Boukhriss S. (2019).
"Evolution des gains de productivité et de profitabilité des élevages français de ruminants et leur variabilité de 1988 à 2016" [Trends in productivity and profitability gains of French ruminant farms and their variability from 1988 to 2016]
Master’s thesis (M2) in “Public Economics and Management, Project and Public Policy Engineering track”, Montpellier University. - Veysset P., Boukhriss S. (2021)
"Gains de productivité et évolution de la profitabilité des élevages bovins français sur trois décennies (1988-2018)" [Productivity gains and changes in the profitability of French bovine farms over three decades (1988–2018)]
Economie Rurale, 378: 119-135.
Task 3.2: Capitalisation of farm income and accumulation of professional assets
Scientific lead: Philippe Jeanneaux
This task aims to assess how part of French farmers’ income is capitalised in the form of machinery, buildings, livestock or land. A significant share of the wealth generated on the farm is indeed generally allocated to building up substantial business assets, thereby favouring deferred remuneration at the expense of immediate remuneration of labour.
- Jeanneaux P., Piet L. (forthcoming)
"Trade-off between investment and private withdrawals: assessing the return on investment for farms in France"
Agricultural Finance Review. - Jeanneaux P., Velay N. (2021)
"Capitalisation du revenu agricole et formation du patrimoine professionnel des exploitations agricoles" [Capitalization of farm income and constitution of professional assets]
Economie Rurale, 378: 97-117.
Task 4.1: Implementation choices for CAP decoupled payments and their impact on income
Scientific lead: Cathie Laroche-Dupraz
This task aims to measure how the choices made by France regarding, on the one hand, the allocation of the CAP Pillar I budget across the various decoupled direct payments and, on the other hand, the practical implementation of these payments affect the actual degree of payment convergence. The three instruments studied in particular are the convergence of the basic payment per hectare, the redistributive payment on the first hectares, and the degressivity and capping of direct payments.
- Beaudouin C. (2019).
"Étude des effets redistributifs de la PAC à l’aide d’un simulateur"
Master’s thesis (M1) in “Environmental, Energy and Transport Economics”, AgroParisTech – Paris-Saclay University. - Chatellier V. (2019).
"Le paiement redistributif et le plafonnement des aides directes : deux outils de la PAC favorables aux petites exploitations agricoles françaises ?" [Redistributive payment and the capping of direct payments: Two CAP instruments that work in the favor of small French farms?]
Economie Rurale, 372: 137-151. - Chatellier V., Detang-Dessendre C., Dupraz P., Guyomard H. (2021).
"Revenus agricoles, aides directes et future PAC : focus sur les exploitations françaises de ruminants et de grandes cultures" [Income, subsidies and the future CAP: focus on French farms specialised in field crops and ruminant livestock]
INRAE Productions Animales, 34(3): 173-190. - Chatellier V., Guyomard H. (2019).
"PAC, soutiens et revenus : réflexions sur certaines tendances à l’œuvre" [CAP, support and incomes: reflections on some ongoing trends]
13èmes Journées de Recherches en Sciences Sociales, Bordeaux (France), 12-13 décembre 2019.
This paper was published as Chapter 2 of the book "Quelle politique agricole commune demain ?" [What Common Agricultural Policy for tomorrow?], Editions Quae. - Piet L., Laroche-Dupraz C., Beaudouin C. (2023).
"Paiement redistributif : impact du seuil de surprime sur le ciblage des exploitations bénéficiaires" [Redistributive payment: impact of the premium ceiling on the targeting of beneficiary farms]
Economie Rurale, 384: 5-21.
Task 4.2: Farm income support and environmental performance
Scientific lead: Aude Ridier
This task aims to study the link between farm income support and the environmental performance of farms through a cross-analysis of indicators from each of these two dimensions. The analysis focuses on two specialised types of farming, dairy cattle and field crops, and draws on both farm-level technical and economic data and the environmental indicators available nationally in the AGRIBALYSE® tool.
- Avril P. (2019).
"PAC et environnement : Les exploitations les plus vertueuses en matière d’environnement sont-elles récompensées ?" [CAP and the environment: are the most environmentally virtuous farms rewarded?]
Master’s thesis (M2) in “Economic Analysis of Development”, Clermont Auvergne University. - Avril P., Ridier A., Samson E. (2021).
"PAC et environnement : les exploitations les plus vertueuses sont-elles récompensées ?" [The CAP and the environment: Who wins?]
Economie Rurale, 377: 101-124.
