After working as an ag Extension educator for nine years, I still can't help getting excited about a new Census of Agriculture report. What's fun this time around is comparing the 2022 numbers for Morgan County, Colorado (current home) to those for Indiana County, Pennsylvania (former home). Can I interest you in some highlights?
Morgan County has a measly 14 dairy farms. Indiana County, Pennsylvania, is more impressive with 75 dairies. But wait... !! Let's look at cow numbers too. Morgan County has 5.6 times as many dairy cows (38,241 vs. 6,875). I'll let you do the figuring for how the farms might look a little bit different here as compared to there.
The average farm size in Morgan County is 908 acres... again 5.6 times the average size of Indiana county farms. But average isn't everything! The median farm size in Morgan County is only 226 acres.
Lastly, I will leave you with the numbers for irrigated acres. Indiana County has 517 acres in the whole county that are irrigated. Morgan County has 83,576 irrigated acres. It's dry here. Thank goodness for irrigation.