Value of Washington ag production in 2009 was down 8%

Washington Ag Today October 25, 2010 The value of Washington’s 2009 agricultural production was down compared to 2008. The Washington Field Office of the Agricultural Statistics Services put the value of last year’s production at 7.27 billion dollars at the farm gate, including government payments, down eight percent from 2008.

Washington State Department of Agriculture Director Dan Newhouse says the global recession impacted the prices of the state’s commodities. Even so, Linda Simpson with the NASS Field Office says there were some record high values set last year.

Simpson: “Record high values for major crops were set for hops, grapes, sweet corn, mint oil, dry edible beans, wrinkled seed peas, alfalfa seed and apricots.”

Simpson runs down the list of the top five Washington commodities by value for 2009.

Simpson: “Leading the list was apples at 1.5 billion dollars in value followed by milk which held on to second place despite an almost on-third drop in value from 2008. Apples represented 21% of the total agricultural value compared to with 17% in 2008. Milk accounted for almost ten percent of the total. In third place were potatoes and in fourth place was wheat. Rounding out the top five were cattle and calves. These top five had a combined value equal to over half the value for all commodities.”

In 2009 the highest value per harvested acre went to non-storage onions with a value of 11-thousand-63 dollars an acre.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net.