Before- and after-tax size economies: an example for cash grain production in Illinois

Extract: This article reports the degree to which economies of farm size exist for commercial Illinois cash grain agriculture, both on a before-and after-tax basis. Receipt, expense, and investment data are from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Manaagement Association records, 1975-79. Analysis of covariance techniques were used in the examination of the five-year time series of cross-sectional data. Results indicate satistically significant evidence of economies of size, both on a before- and after-tax basis. There was no significant evidence of diseconomies of size for this sample