| Abstract: | An important farm household survival strategy in the 1980s agricultural crisis was off-farm employment. Recent research shows that gender role expectations structure off-farm employment's effects on farm operations. However, this research does not evaluate off-farm employment's effects within different socioeconomic and cultural settings. This article explores case studies of two localities with different farming systems: family farming in the Cornbelt and capitalist (or wage labor) farming in the Mississippi Delta. Farmers in two counties representative of each system responded to mail questionnaires covering various topics including farm and household changes made during the 1980s financial crisis. Loglinear modèls estimating the relationship between changes in off-farm employment and selected changes in farm operations derive results for the Cornbelt that confirm previous studies. Women's off-farm employment, in particular, relates to a variety of changes in the farm enterprise and improves its capital position. As expected, given its historic separation of household and enterprise, the Mississippi Delta evinces no such pattern of change. These results indicate the need for additional research on this topic, comparing different agrarian class structures. |
