Economic Impact Part 2

Economic Impact Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday we began looking at how the tree fruit industry affects the economic impact of the state and Dr. Patrick Jones from Eastern Washington University started by laying out the ground rules of their study. The study had to go back a few years to pull data.

JONES: As fruit growers you do represent the State of Washington’s largest agricultural sector. You are larger than milk; you are larger than potatoes; you are larger than wheat by value of output and again this is measured at the farm gate or at the grower level. So over a quarter of all the money that came to agriculture in 2009 was due to you.

Jones takes a look at some numbers from 2007 through 2009.

JONES: So here the bottom line for fruit growing for the state. Again, this is value added. About 1.1 billion of sales took place. I shouldn’t say sales...of value added took place over this three year period and due to the re-spending that takes place, over time it doubled. Close to doubled so that gives you a multiplier at the state level of about 2. So you went from 1.1 billion to almost 2 billion rounded for value added in those three particular years as an average.

And that helped generate some considerable tax money.

JONES: You helped raise nearly $115 million dollars over that period.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.