FARMERS’ SHARE OF MONEY SPENT ON FOOD IN AUSTRIA

Abstract

There has been renewed interest in the farmer’s share of retail food sales recently,in the wake of sharp fluctuations in farm-gate or retail prices. Statistics on farmers’shares were already being developed decades ago and recent updates are a responseto these fluctuations. We define the farm share as the average portion from eachmonetary unit spent on food by consumers that is received by farmers for theiragricultural commodities. The same calculation gives the marketing margin, whichis the remainder. Calculations show that the farmer's share from retail food saleshas been on the decline for more than 60 years. Therefore, the gap betweenfarmers’ share and marketing margin is widening. This paper presents (i) thedevelopment of the farmers’ share for Austria mainly for the period 1995 to 2013and, where data is available, from 1971 onwards and(ii) compares the results withthe developments in Germany and the United States as well as Switzerland. ForAustria, two calculation methods are shown: the Agristat method (developed inSwitzerland) and the method of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research(WIFO). Both calculations are based on official statistical data (EconomicAccounts for Agriculture, National Accounts and trade data) but use differentapproaches. This paper uses the findings of these calculations to hypothesize onnecessary areas for future research.