On Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:53:55 +0000 (GMT),
("David G. Bell") wrote:

On Thursday, in article

"Bootlaces" wrote:

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message

snip
Cash Income distribution, all farms
HHHHHHHHHHHH £0 (12%)
HHHHHHHHHH £0-£5,000 (10%)
HHHHHHHHHH £5,000-£10,000 (10%)
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH £10,000-£20,000 (20%)
HHHHHHHHHHHHHH £20,000-£30,000 (14%)
HHHHHHHHH £30,000-£40,000 (9%)
HHHHHHH £40,000-£50,000 (7%)
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH £50,000+ (19%)
Average Cash Income £31,462 per farm

I appear to have a problem with the summation of the %ages - they add up to
101.

Not a problem -- it's a common consequence of rounding-off percentages.

Sorry if I've missed something as I haven't been paying that much attention
to this thread, but...

Are there any actual absolute numbers rather than %ages?

Is there any finer detail on the £50k+ section?

Checking the figures in Nix for the distribution of farm size, the GBP
50k section is more than the number of farms over 100 Ha.

If you take all farms in GB (~230,000), those above 100 ha would
be about 17 % of them. But the FBS sample on which the numbers above
are bases, does represents only commercial farms, that is farms with
a SGM of 8 ESUs or above.

It's not at
all clear that there is a reliable mapping between Cash Income and size,

I can't see why one should expect a reliable mapping there, since
averaging is done across all sizes and all farm types, all the way
from LFA cattle&sheep to high intensity pigs&poultry.

but GBP 500 per Hectare seems pretty good going.

Cash Income and acreage of the average farm are reported
to be £31,462 and 105 hectares.

Just putting off a tractor replacement for a year could be worth GBP 25k
on Cash Income,

It is a valid point that postponement of replacements might
skew numbers assuming many do it in unison, and when incomes are
volatile in rock bottom times they might. However, I think this is
not a field where we can expect perfect measures, the question must
be whether the effect you point to is likely to have skewed numbers
to render the measure useless for its purpose.

which is one reason why I'm sceptical about this as an
indicator of long term prospects.

It is a measure of past farm income. Noone has suggested that
it has any particular role to play in prospection of the long term
fortunes for farming in the UK.