Agriculture Isn’t All About the Money

I want to clear some things up and challenge readers’ thinking on the concerns and comments about managed farmland near bangalore and raising livestock being nothing more than a money-making sector of the economy. I’ve noted several comments about this in a number of sites, not to mention articles that claim that “farmers just raise their animals/crops because they’re looking for a profit.” I never exactly questioned the why’s and wherefore’s of these comments until now.

Why is it that people think and believe that farms and farming is merely a money-making venture, or that farmers (who I prefer to call producers) raise livestock like cattle just to make a profit off of them?? Also, why is there such negativity and bitterness surrounding the fact that producers growing crops and raising livestock do it to not feed themselves but to make money?? I don’t get it, coming from a farming background myself I just can’t get my head around the reason for people to carelessly throw that out there and expect everyone to take it as fact.

The problem is that it’s really only partly fact. And what most don’t realize, especially those who are generations removed from the farm, is that in most if not all agricultural enterprises, very little to no true profit has been made. Yes, the very thing that we producers end up with at the end is money in the pocket, because the farms we run are done so as a business (except for the urbanites’ hobby farms), but this money we get is gross profit or income, NOT net profit or just plain profit. To say that people farm or raise livestock just to make a profit is really an outright lie. It’s also a show of ignorance and misunderstanding about finances because there is far more to it than what people might think.

When a producer calculates profit, he cannot ever figure that he is making money simply by the check he gets from the barley grain or cattle he sold. This often-yearly cheque that he gets is what gross profit or income is all about. Net profit is determined when all of his expenses that he has incurred from the farm’s operations are subtracted to the income he received from what he sold. Income should never be confused with profit, because income is really the money that comes into a business after a product is sold, excluding expenses. Profit or Net Profit, however, is money that is left over after all expenses are deducted from gross profit. If no income is left over after all expenses are deducted, it is called Net Loss.