As is shown in Table 1, with few exceptions net incomes of operators 

 interviewed were obtained from both farm and non-farm sources. Only 

 members of the highest income group depended entirely on the farm for 

 their income. This combined source of income may well have influenced 

 the operators' attitude toward leaving the farm, although no data are 

 available to prove this. 



Table 1. Distribution of Farms by Percent of Net Income From Farming 



A. 



Income 



Hypothesis No. 1, that the lower income farmers would be more likely to 

 consider leaving their farms than the higher income farmers, was not 

 supported. A majority in both income classes showed no inclination to 

 move. The income distribution of the operators who had considered leaving 

 was not significantly different from those who had never considered leaving. 1 

 Whether a farmer had considered moving or staying is not related to 

 his level of net income. In other words, a farmer would be just as likely 

 to make the same decision to move off this farm to a farm elsewhere or 

 to enter non-farm employment, or to stay, if his net income were $1,000 

 as if his net income were $9,000. 



B. Age 



Hypothesis No. 2, that the age of the operator influenced his attitude towards 

 leaving the farm, was not supported. Age was not significant in differ- 

 entiating between the group who have considered leaving and the group 

 who had not considered leaving. The findings are given in Table 3. 



1 Tests of significance in this study are limited to Chi-square and significance of 

 difference of normally distributed bi-variate populations. 



