The 2022 Census of Agriculture List of Reports and Publications | 2022 Census of Agriculture | USDA/NASS documents U.S. agricultural sector activity every 5 years for years ending in 2 and 7.  2022 Census of Agriculture data will be released beginning February 13, 2024 at the URL above and be released for multiple years covering multiple subject areas.  The first Census of Agriculture was released in 1840 1840 – AgCensus (cornell.edu) as part of that year’s decennial U.S. Census.  This was 22 years before the U.S. Department of Agriculture was established in 1862 USDA Celebrates 150 Years | USDA  

Beginning in 1925 the Census of Agriculture was produced every five years  by the Census Bureau. The 1997 Census of Agriculture saw Congress transfer responsibility for conducting this documentary compilation to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service 1997 – AgCensus (cornell.edu) where it has remained since then.

Numerous resources and data points can be found in the Census of Agriculture and this data has changed over time as U.S. agricultural production and producers have evolved due to changing circumstances and technologies.    Such information includes U.S. national summary data, state summary data,  county summary data, and data for U.S. territorial areas such as Guam and Puerto Rico.  Maps and zip code data can be generated along with information on watersheds, specialty crops, irrigation, aquaculture, horticulture, organic agriculture, rankings of agricultural production by congressional district, race, ethnicity, and gender profiles of agricultural producers, and numerous other components.  Privacy reasons prevent the disclosure of operations of individual farms and ranches, but you can find out how much acreage is produced on corn or livestock production for particular counties along with agricultural sales. For instance, this section st18_2_0002_0002.pdf (usda.gov) from the 2017 Census of Agriculture contains the market value of agricultural products sold from the 2017 and 2012 Census of Agriculture for all Indiana counties, this includes 2017 Hired Farm Labor Workers and Payroll data st18_2_0007_0007.pdf (usda.gov) for Indiana counties for 2017, and this includes st18_2_0019_0019.pdf (usda.gov) poultry inventory and number sold for 2017 and 2012.

The Census of Agriculture is an essential resource for documenting the historical and contemporary development and evolution of U.S. agriculture policy and practice for nearly two centuries and, given agriculture’s enduringly important role in Indiana, we should enthusiastically promote it to our users.

This blog post was submitted by Bert Chapman, Purdue University.