Agriculture et inflation : variation des prix et des coûts 1963-1975

The concept of annual income for farming in the whole of the EEC (EUR-9) is not clear. This income is not accurately known and one can have an idea of it only after a certain lapse of time. This article shows that accidental phenomena, in conjunction with high inflation, have, during the past three years, perturbed the fundamental tendencies of stability and growth that farming had known during the previous ten years. In order to follow the short-term development of farm income, it is at present difficult to collect data. The prices of the products bought or sold by the farmers are the only factors that can be quickly observed and synthetized, more or less accurately. The variation of gross added value owing to variations in the prices of the final output and of meantime consumption alone, enables and approximate estimation of the development of income to be made. Although prices varied much more favourably in 1975 than in 1974, the analysis carried out for each country individually, when the various inflation rates are added, shows that in real terms for 1975 farm incomes went down for all nine countries of the EEC.