Census of Ag
Census of Ag. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
Last week the 2007 Census of Agriculture was released. Some 85.7% farmers and ranchers responded and according to USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service’s Deputy Administer, Carol House the information is very welcomed.
HOUSE: It’s the only time that we actually try to count every farm and ranch in the
House says that that incoming Ag Secretary Vilsack is starting his tenure with the latest information, hot off the presses.
HOUSE: He is very excited about having good information because he has a lot of decisions to make and policy and directions to set for agriculture to help all of us make the most of the agricultural production that we have out there.
A lot of sectors outside of agriculture also use the information.
HOUSE: Businesses make decisions based on the census perhaps where they might locate a new company or store. Operating loans and other kinds of things, those are based partly on the information that is available in the census and because this information is down to the county level, community organizations and community leaders use this both in terms of planning and for grant writing to draw more money into a community.
So how did the numbers go?
HOUSE: One of the things that we had is an increase in the farm numbers. Since World War II there has been a downward trend in farm numbers even though different components of farms have changed – gone up and down a little bit but 4% up in farm numbers was a little bit of a surprise. It really sort of shows a leveling out in the last 3 or 4 censuses in terms of the decrease in farm numbers.
The complete report is quite massive and its available online for your review and is broken down into easy to manage sections including those county by county reports. Go to www.agcensus.usda.gov. More with Carol House on the Census tomorrow.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
