Ag Census

Ag Census

With the release of the latest numbers from the 2012 Census of Agriculture on Friday it can still safely be said that agriculture continues to be a driver for most state economies. The response from farmers and ranchers was tremendous with more than 80 percent returning their Census of Ag forms. While beef continues to hold its top spot as the single most valuable commodity in the United States, an interesting thing happened in 2012 - the value of all crop sales outpaced overall livestock sales for the first time since 1974. Some interesting highlights from the ag census include that while there were fewer acres in farming in 2012, the average farm grew by 20 acres to 434 acres, and that family farms account for a whopping 87 percent of operations in the U.S.. Other impressive stats show that women now make up 30.5 percent of farm operators and the number of Latino farmers grew by 21 percent. There are more than 6 million individual pieces of information presented in the ag census that the experts will now delve into. If you would like to view the data yourself visit www.agcensus.usda.gov..




 
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