D4—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 24,1981
* Painting an unimportant
farming picture
It may come as a surprise to
some of the proponents of local
agriculture, but there isn’t one
county on the Delmarva peninsula
that depends on farming, ac
cording to a new U.S. Department
of Agriculture report.
In fact, there are only 700
counties in the whole United States
that depend on farming, if you use
the Department of Agriculture’s
definition. That’s in sharp contrast
to 30 years ago when there were
2,000 such counties.
While it’s easy to quarrel with
USDA’s definition of dependence
on farming, it’s a mistake to
overlook the reality of declining
political power within these
counties.
Let’s look at how the Depart-
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ment of Agriculture defines far
ming counties, and-perhaps then
we can better understand this
whole business of dependence.
USDA considers a county as far
ming if that enterprise is a leading
source of income. To be that, it
must account for 20 percent or
more of proprietor and labor in- -
come for that county.
When this rule is applied to all
counties in the U.S., five groups
emerge according to changing
dependence on farming. These
are: consistently farming coun
ties, farm loss counties, formerly
farming counties, nonfarm
counties, and a nonexclusive
category called overshadowed
counties, where a large farm
sector is eclipsed by even larger
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* • e*
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SMALL -
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Months Old
ADJUSTABLE-
For Heifers & Cows
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LARGE-
For Cows
15 Months
And Older
nonfarm economic activities.
There are no counties on the
Delmarva peninsula classified as
consistently farming counties
where at least 20 percent of labor
and proprietors’ income is derived
from farming. There are, however,
two overshadowed counties
Kent and Sussex in Delaware
that are in the top 20 percent of
U.S. farming counties, but farm
income is still overshadowed by
income from other sources. The
rest fall into a category labeled
“other counties.”
Looking at the farm dependence
issue on a regional basis, it’s easy
to demonstrate that the northeast
is losing its agricultural depen
dence, .and* along with it, its
agricultural political power. In
1950 there were 33 counties in New
England and the Mid-Atlantic
states that received at least 20
percent of proprietor and labor
income from fanning. Now there is
only one.
That’s not to say that fanning is
unimportant in all but one county
in the northeast, it just says that
farming is not as important as a
source of income as some other'
things. And you must remember
we’re looking at county income
andcounty averages. If more than
20 percent of- the county income
was farm related, then that’s
considered a consistently farming
county. If the figure is less than
that, then it’s classified as
something else.
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The Department of Agriculture
analysts say a large share of the
dependence on fanning vanished
in the 19505. A map of the United
States showing those counties that
depended on farming in 1950 is
almost solid black. Throughout the
midwest and west there were farm
counties with scattered exceptions,
primarily in the northeast, north
central, and the desert.areas of the
southwest. But today that map is
almost white, signaling the ab
sence of farming counties.
Analysts say the half-million
farms in consistently farming
counties average 585 acres,
compared to the 440 acre U.S.
average. The contain 23 percent of
the nation’s farms, had 31 percent
of U.S. farmland, and 33 percent of
all farms with more than $40,000 in
sales. These counties harvested 53
percent of the U.S. wheat average,
47 percent of the land in other
small grains, 41 percent of the
sorghum acreage, 38 percent of the
land in com, and 33 percent of the
land in soybeans. Nearly 78 per
cent of the farm operators in
consistently farming counties
reported fanning as their principle
occupation.
About 30 percent of the jobs in
consistently fanning counties were
on farms in the mid-seventies, but
fanning provided less than four
percent of total employment in the
remaining counties. And not
surprisingly government, in
cluding state, federal and local,
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and service firms were the largest
employers of wage and salary
workers in all county groups.
Here are some final statistics
from that survey: Counties with a
continuing dependence on
agriculture tend to be sparsely
settled, containing only four
percent of the nation’s population.
Population in the consistently
farming averaged 11,800 per
county, and only 8,700 in the farm
loss group, compared to 27,200 in
the formerly farming group, and
over 150,000 in the nonfarm group.
Population growth also was
slowest in consistently farming
and farm loss counties.
What does it all mean? Well,
from a political power point of
view, it’s pretty obvious that the
number of congressional districts
where farming is a major source of
income are few and far between.
That makes it more and more
difficult for the remaining farmers
to get their points of view listened
to. And it means it’s harder for
farmers to rally the vote when it
comes to a lot of other issues, in
cluding zoing, farmland preser
vation, waste management, and
dozens of other issues that are
brought before the public for
consideration.
The government survey doesn’t
say that the Delmarva peninsula is
not an important farming area. It
just says that farming is not as
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