Misperceptions About Production Ag
I’m Susan Allen stay tuned for Open Range, after the break I’ll share some statistics from the USDA that might change the perception some folks have about production agriculture. One mindset I encounter regularly is that there aren’t many “mom and pop” ranches left in the USA but according to the latest USDA livestock operation report, that simply isn’t true. Nearly thirty percent of all US beef cattle come from cow populations of less than fifty head, 588,000 cows to be exact. The largest percentage of all the cattle that head to market (nearly forty percent) happen to be found on ranches that raise one hundred to four hundred and ninety-nine cows a year. And get this, those large scale operations, the very ones the anti- meat activist love to vilify, well here’s real deal; Operations running a thousand head account for just 4.5 percent of the beef industry, two thousand head, 2.1 percent and the so called "big bad mega ranches" those with more than five thousand head make up less than one percent of the beef industry,one percent! While the number of farms and ranches, 2.2 million hasn’t changed from 2009 the number of beef cattle has dropped one percent. And finally another statistic that came as a surprise to me was the fact that 1.23 million farms report less than ten thousand dollars in sales and while those small operations account for about fifty-five percent of all farms they make up only 11 percent of total farm acreage.
