(Editor’s Note – The NASS’s latest report offering is pretty impressive. You can find out lots of detailed agricultural details for your area as well as other areas around the country. We’ve provided a couple of examples after the press release from the NASS.)
Washington – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released the Congressional District Profiles and Rankings from the 2022 Census of Agriculture. This summary presents data by congressional district from the 118th Congress that includes land, farms, market value of agricultural products sold, rankings and producer characteristics.
“These profiles present local data in a fast and easy-to-read format, allowing producers and all data users to quickly view and evaluate information,” said NASS Acting Administrator Joseph Parsons. “Congressional District Profiles and Rankings from the ag census are only available every five years. Providing ag census information at a congressional district level, in addition to state, county and nationwide data, allows data users to compare districts to each other, shows the value of agriculture in a district, and informs policy makers.”
NASS released the Census of Agriculture State and County Profiles on March 27. Upcoming releases include the Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Profiles on June 28; the Watersheds report on July 24; the American Indian Reservations Report on Aug. 29; and Zip Code Tabulations on Nov. 7. All these products will be available at nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022.
Other products to be released this summer and fall include additional census Highlights publications found on the NASS website at www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights. Census of Agriculture Highlights cover topics such as information about producer demographics, commodity-specific information and more.
Data from the 2022 Census of Agriculture, collected directly from producers, found a continued decline in farms and farmland and a rise in the number of new and beginning (operating 10 or fewer years on any farm) as well as young (under the age of 35) producers. Another continuing trend included a rise in internet access (79 percent compared to 75 percent in 2017). Spanning more than 6 million data points about America’s farms and ranches and the people who operate them, the full ag census report can be found at nass.usda.gov/AgCensus. Ag census data can also be found in NASS’s searchable online database, Quick Stats.
In preparation for the 2027 Census of Agriculture, NASS is already asking for content change suggestions and for new producers who did not receive a 2022 Census of Agriculture form last year to sign up to be counted in future censuses and surveys. Both forms can be found at nass.usda.gov.
Examples Of Available Reports
Here are a couple of quick reports from the NASS census. As mentioned, the reports are broken down by congressional districts but we pulled data from Idaho and then zeroed in on Bingham County, one of the largest potato producing counties in the state of Idaho. You can pull data from each state and each county. When pulling information for congressional districts, it is a cumulative total for all the counties in that district and shows the impact of agriculture in that district with all sorts of data available.
Depending on what you’re looking for/interested in, you could spend a lot of time looking over all the data that is available.
So, our quick search found, according to the census, that in the latest information, Idaho has 22,877 farms with ag sales topping $10 billion. There are 1,231 vegetable, melon, potato and sweet potato farms in the state. Bingham County is the top county for grains, oilseeds, dry beans and dry peas in the state as well as tops in vegetables, melons, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Bingham County’s ranking as No. 1 in that last category is thanks mostly to potatoes as there aren’t any sweet potatoes grown in the county.
More specifically, according to the census, Bingham County’s market value of products sold in 2022 was $575,692,000, a 27 percent increase from 2017. However, the number of farms in 2022 (1,081) is down 8 percent from 2017. The land in farms in 2022 (897,796 acres) is down 4 percent. There are 55,359 acres of potatoes in the county but 136,688 acres of wheat for grain. Of the growers (producers as defined in the report), the majority (1,263) are between 35-64 years old.
And the data goes on and on. We barely scratched the surface of what is available.
Again, you can access the census here: Congressional District Profiles and Rankings.