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A new survey has found that farm wives are becoming increasingly involved in the financial aspects of running the family farm.
According to the quarterly AgScan by Solutions Marketing and Research, almost half of the 1,356 farms surveyed stated that research and final decisions regarding banks and insurance providers was the result of joint decisions between husbands and wives.
The survey also revealed that throughout the country, both husbands and wives share responsibility for collecting crop protection and animal health products (45% each), though when the data was analysed according to farm type, women were primarily responsible for collecting these products on sugar cane (70%), cotton (63%) and grain (54%) farms.
Bob Sloane, Research Manager at Solutions, said, “The findings from this survey confirm a growing trend that we have seen over the last few years, as wives are becoming increasingly involved in the financial aspects of farming operations. This is something that financial institutions, such as banks and insurance providers, ought to take into account when preparing to contact these farming operations, as it should no longer be assumed that the husband is solely responsible for these decisions.”
Bob Sloane says although research and purchase decisions regarding crop protection chemicals, fertilisers and animal health products, remain firmly in the domain of the husband, financial decisions are increasingly being made by farmers’ wives.
“These statistics demonstrate how women on these farms are increasingly responsible for different aspects of the farm work, from making financial decisions to heading into town to pick up the different products required. They also reveal that women are most active on sugar cane farms in Tasmania which are between 400 and 800 hectares in size.”
Source: Solutions Marketing and Research