The Billion Dollar Counties
Jan 15, 2012
Every five years the USDA performs an agricultural census of the farms in the US. The last census was performed in 2007 with this year being the next census. We have already seen some of the census forms received by our farm clients.
We were curious how many counties in the US had more than $1 billion in farm sales in 2007. We accumulated the list as follows:
|
State
|
|
County
|
|
Total Value
|
|
California
|
|
Fresno
|
|
3,730,546
|
|
California
|
|
Tulare
|
|
3,335,014
|
|
California
|
|
Kern
|
|
3,204,147
|
|
California
|
|
Merced
|
|
2,330,408
|
|
California
|
|
Monterey
|
|
2,178,470
|
|
California
|
|
Stanislaus
|
|
1,820,564
|
|
California
|
|
San Joaquin
|
|
1,564,354
|
|
California
|
|
Kings
|
|
1,358,410
|
|
California
|
|
Ventura
|
|
1,316,315
|
|
California
|
|
Imperial
|
|
1,290,253
|
|
California
|
|
San Diego
|
|
1,054,182
|
|
California
|
|
Riverside
|
|
1,012,041
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Colorado
|
|
Weld
|
|
1,539,072
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Iowa
|
|
Sioux
|
|
112,144
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
North Carolina
|
|
Sampson
|
|
1,196,332
|
|
North Carolina
|
|
Duplin
|
|
1,176,272
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Pennsylvania
|
|
Lancaster
|
|
1,072,151
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Texas
|
|
Deaf Smith
|
|
1,148,359
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Washington
|
|
Yakima
|
|
1,203,806
|
|
Washington
|
|
Grant
|
|
1,190,191
|
As you see, California was the most dominant state with twelve counties exceeding $1 billion in farm sales. California also had a couple of other counties that were very close to the billion dollar level.
Only two other states had at least two counties (1) North Carolina and (2) Washington.
Our guess is that this list will easily double in the next census to come out later this year. Several states had at least two to four counties there were in excess of $750 million of farm sales and with the current high prices,we would guess this will push those counties over the $1 billion mark.
We will keep you posted on how the next census numbers end up.
