OLMIS

by Jason J. Yohannan
Published Jul-2-2009

Calling It a Farm Is Only the Beginning Eastern Oregon's Farms Generally Are Family Farms Eastern Oregon Livestock: More Hoof, Less Beak One More Chart Topper

Tabulations from the 2007 Census of Agriculture, issued earlier this year, cover a wide range of topics. Data for Oregon and its counties fill several hundred pages. We previously reviewed what those numbers had to say about Eastern Oregon's average farm size, revenues, profitability, and farm operators' primary occupations. Because there's so much more to dissect from this resource, we'll devote more space here to further explore one of this region's most important industries.

Plenty of farms raise multiple commodities, but the Census of Agriculture assigned each operation a single industry code for classification purposes. Based on that system, Eastern Oregon's 4,265 farms were sorted into one of 14 more-detailed categories. Table 1 offers a top-five ranking, by county, of the number of farms by detailed type. Not surprisingly, beef cattle ranching topped the list in all six local counties. A cattle ranch was the most common type of farm on a statewide basis, too.

The 2007 Census of Agriculture counted more corporate farms in Oregon and in all six counties of Eastern Oregon than did the 2002 Census of Agriculture. But, as of 2007, an overwhelming majority of Eastern Oregon's farms were still small family farms (Graph 1).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) defines a "small" family farm as one with sales of less than $250,000. "Large" family farms sell between $250,000 and $499,999 in agricultural goods. Sales at "very large" family farms add up to at least $500,000.

According to ERS, nonfamily farms are farms organized as nonfamily corporations, as well as farms operated by hired managers.

The Census of Agriculture further divides small family farms into five subcategories. These include limited-resource farms, retirement farms, residential/lifestyle farms, farming occupation-lower sales, and farming occupation-higher sales. In Eastern Oregon, a plurality of small family farms fell into the residential/lifestyle group in 2007, meaning that the principal operator reported his or her primary occupation as something other than farming. This was also the case in most of Oregon's other counties, though four counties (Clatsop, Curry, Jefferson, and Wheeler) reported more retirement farms than residential/lifestyle farms.

Corresponding pie charts for Oregon and the United States wouldn't look too much different than Eastern Oregon's. Eastern Oregon had a slightly smaller share of small family farms than the rest of the state and the rest of the country and a slightly greater share of large family farms.

According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, Oregon's most common farm critter was broilers and other meat-type chickens. We had more than 4 million of them as of December 31, 2007. But the poultry segment of Oregon's agriculture industry is concentrated in Western Oregon; Eastern Oregon is cow country. Cattle and calves topped the livestock inventory in this region (Table 2), whereas broilers didn't even crack the top five in any local county, though other miscellaneous poultry items, including pheasants and quail, made an appearance.

A couple of the local livestock counts were statewide leaders. Malheur County's 213,325 cattle and calves outnumbered those in any other Oregon county and ranked 35^th nationally. Wallowa County's bison herd - the exact inventory number couldn't be disclosed - also ranked first in the state.

Finally, here's another powerful ranking: Malheur County devoted 13,492 acres to production of dry onions in 2007. ("Dry" means they're not green onions.) That was more acreage for this crop than in any other county of the United States. Malheur County's dry onion acreage ranked first among the nation's 3,000+ counties back in the 2002 Census of Agriculture, too. Those pungent little bulbs - actually, some Malheur County onions are anything but little - definitely play a substantial role in the local economy.