Your link to the Universities for ag extension and research information Volume 5, Number 1 January 1999 This Month in Ag Connection Publishing Information Ag Connection is published monthly for Central Missouri Region producers and is supported by University Outreach and Extension, the Commercial Agriculture program, the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station and the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, UM-Columbia. Please send your comments and suggestions to Don Day, Ag. To send a message to an author, click on the author's name at the end of an article. During the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of days that farmers and family members work off the farm. Even if one member of the household farms full-time, the spouse may be employed elsewhere.
Finances are a major stress factor in families.
If not, this may be a time to seriously consider minimizing the further erosion of assets and holding on to the essentials that make farm life satisfying. Psychologists have long known that if people are occasionally successful, they will continue to try even if those successes are relatively infrequent. Lotteries capitalize on this trait and this is one of the rationales for the occasional small lottery payoff. People take their small winnings and buy additional chances, lose more, and continue to spend even more money. Farmers sometimes try to maintain their lifestyle by sinking what equity they have accumulated back into an inefficient and non-profitable situation.