The purpose of this paper is to explore a pilot sample of Farm Household Survey micro-data with respect to farm family consumption in the period between 1931 and 1941. The focus is on self-provisioned consumption, which was unmistakably important in the prewar farm household economy. However, the paper is concerned with the impact of the Great Depression on the relationship between expenditures for purchased and self-provisioned goods, since the Depression hit the farm economy's cash-earning sector, sericulture, hardest. Thus, by dividing the sample into sericulture and non-sericulture households, it is demonstrated that between 1931, the bottom year, and 1936 — a period during which a pessimistic mood lingered despite a trend of modestly improving farm household income — a rise in the ratio of real farm income compared to that for 1931 did not result in an increase in the proportion of market-oriented expenditure. For the sericulturalists, even a negative correlation is apparent between the farm income ratio and the proportion of self-provisioned consumption.
