Also interesting is the breakdown of farms using computers for business by economic class, referring to the amount of sales and government payments a farm received during the previous year. In the figure below, we can see that there is certainly a growing trend among farm businesses to use the computer to some extent in their business operations. Sixty-seven percent of farms with sales and payments of $250,000 and over used computers for business purposes in 2005. On the other hand, only 20% of farms representing those with sales and payments of $1,000 – $9,999 used computers for business in 2005.

Figure 2. Farm Computer Usage by Amount of Sales: 1997-2005