3.2 Historical Analysis of the Results of Farms in
Isère
3.2.1 Data Collection
The data used in this part of the research have been extracted
from the database of the CERFRANCE
Isère. This database has 5 years
of results available, for 2 000 farms operating in Isère.
CERFRANCE
Isère is the leading accounting company in the area,
serving more than 50% of the 3 999 professional
farms of the department (Agreste, 2011). Therefore, we can
consider the results extracted from this sample as representative of the
population of farmers of Isère. This is why the inclusion criteria for
the extractions were as wide as possible:
- All companies which are taxed at the
«bénéfice réel», which means that they are
obligated to produce a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement and a cash
flow statement to the tax administration. All the companies with a turnover
above 76 300 € are concerned by this obligation. This inclusion criterion
is obvious because without books accounts profitability or leverage ratios
cannot be calculated.
- All companies that are taxed under the
«Bénéfice agricole» regime, which means that more than
70% of their turnover comes from agricultural activities. This inclusion
criteria has been chosen to minimize the impact of forestry, environmental
services and other activities practiced by some farmers.
The software used at the CERFRANCE Isère (Panda) cannot
produce extractions for several years at one time neither an extraction with
all the data about a year in one file. Therefore, two extractions were made for
each year:
- One excel sheet with all the balance sheet information
available (146 data per farm, from
surface, number of labor units to asset valuation. See Appendix 1
for illustration),
- A second excel sheet with all profit & loss and cash flow
statement information (143 data per farm. See Appendix 2 for illustration)
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Years of extraction
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Number of farms after extraction Number of farms
selected
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2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
1 060 620
1 231 620
1 199 620
919 620
1 054 620
Table 7: Primary data for the analysis of farms' results
in Isère
As presented in Table 7, the number of companies available is
not constant. This effect is due to the information system structure: depending
on the way the accounting books are send to the tax administration, the results
of the farm are automatically or manually uploaded into the database. The only
exclusion criterion was to keep a constant sample over the five years.
Therefore all farms which did not have results for 1 or more year were
excluded. This exclusion criterion reduced the population of observed farms to
620.
The 620 farms have been classified into 7 specializations,
based on the production most observed in the department of Isère (see
Figure 12). A farm generating 2/3 of its turnover from one main production was
considered as specialized in this production. Cattle ranching corresponds to
the beef production (sheep or other ruminants were considered as diversified
production as they do not represent enough farms to constitute a group). Walnut
productions, vegetables and fruit growing
were not analyzed as the number of farms observed was too low to
make groups based on their financial leverage.
256
13 28 11
45
141
Dairy farming
Grain
Cattle ranching Diversified production Vegetables
126 Walnut production
Fruit growing
Figure 12: Number of farm for each
specialization
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