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Recovering after a year without water
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Commodity summary details Basin production
published April 2, 2003
By MATT HALL
Klamath County's agricultural economy has rebounded from the water shut-off of 2001 according to commodity surveys.
Figures available from the Oregon State University Extension Service's Oregon Agricultural Information Network's 2002 commodity summaries and reports document Klamath County's recovery.
"It's published annually by Oregon State University with our input," said Rod Todd, crop production specialist for Oregon State University's Klamath County Extension Service. "It's also adjusted following the publication by the United States Department of Agriculture. The department does some adjustment so that the individual numbers add up, more or less. So the 2001 summaries are considered final, the 2002 figures are considered preliminary."
The commodity summaries and reports are linked with the agriculture reporting systems of the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, and local level sources such as the United States Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency.
"It's an attempt to assess the acreage, production, and value of locally produced crops and livestock," said Todd. "The big picture use of this is to look at the size of the local agricultural economy. That's often done in assessing an area's productivity, the value of agriculture to a community, and the percentage of income contributed by the agricultural sector.
What Todd sees from this is a strong increase in Klamath County's agricultural income over the past year.
"We were able to rebound from the 2001 water cut-off year," said Todd. "During 2002, in addition to recovering most of the cropped acreage, we also saw significantly increased prices in a couple of sectors - to name one, potatoes.
"The total overall value (of all crops and commodities in Klamath County) is up some $18 million dollars from 2002, and some $32 million from 2001 - and one of the significant sectors that increased was potatoes."
Acres planted in potatoes in Klamath County stood at 5,900 in 2000, dipped to 2,600 acres during the water shut-off of 2001, and then rebounded to 5,250 acres in 2002. The price for potatoes per hundredweight stood at $3.12 in 2000, rose to $6 per hundredweight during 2001, and rose again to $6.75 during 2002. At the same time the overall value of sales for potatoes in Klamath County was $8.04 million in 2000, dropped to $6.89 million in 2001, and rose to $16.99 million in 2002.
"People said, 'Oh, the water cut-off didn't really hurt agriculture that much ... $20 million, something like that,' " said Todd. "But as many within agriculture have pointed out there was a lost opportunity as the grain, and more importantly the potato, prices went up during 2001, and people weren't able to take advantage of them.
"They (potato prices) remained fairly good in 2002, and that helps account for this big increase between 2000 and 2002."
In total, crops and livestock income for Klamath County stood at $129.68 million in 2000, dipped to $115.73 million during the water shut-off year of 2001, and then rose to $147.49 million during 2002.
However, when analyzing the data, Todd advises caution.
"There's some detail here that you don't see," he said. "What masked some of the suffering in 2001 was a very good livestock year, a good cattle year. It was not as affected by the water cut-off. A lot of the cattle pasture areas were outside the project for example, and it was a good market year for cattle.
"These are the gross figures, but if you look here at the detail you can probably see total agriculture went down. This increase is in spite of seeing a drop-off in livestock prices during 2002."
Other uses for the figures, beyond charting the agriculture progress of the county, is reinforcement for both producers and lenders that the local agricultural economy is in good shape.
"This is often used by financial institutions and government planning agencies," said Todd. "Maybe it has some additional value in suggesting to a lender that the economy is sound and healthy, and shouldn't be condemned overall for any weakness we saw in 2001. I don't know whether that's a reasonable use of the numbers or not, but it occurs to me that it does illustrate that point - that of a robust agricultural economy.
"And I think that there is a certain local pride amongst the farm community about the value of agriculture. When they see that we're up significantly from even two years ago, and have recovered substantially from the hit we took in 2001 - well, I think there's a certain pride, if you will, in those numbers."
Todd hastens to add that these figures only reflect the agriculture economy and trends for Klamath County. When figured regionally, he points out, the influence of agriculture is even stronger.
"I no longer attempt to put together a Basin-wide set of figures, but in general you can look at an almost mirror-image set of numbers from across the state line within the Klamath Project," he said. "This is just Klamath County. There's nearly an equal acreage, and often very close to this much additional agriculture income coming from the parts of the Basin on the other side of the state line.
"So we're just roughly looking at a quarter of a billion dollars here in this agriculture economy."
published April 2, 2003
By MATT HALL
Klamath County's agricultural economy has rebounded from the water shut-off of 2001 according to commodity surveys.
Figures available from the Oregon State University Extension Service's Oregon Agricultural Information Network's 2002 commodity summaries and reports document Klamath County's recovery.
"It's published annually by Oregon State University with our input," said Rod Todd, crop production specialist for Oregon State University's Klamath County Extension Service. "It's also adjusted following the publication by the United States Department of Agriculture. The department does some adjustment so that the individual numbers add up, more or less. So the 2001 summaries are considered final, the 2002 figures are considered preliminary."
The commodity summaries and reports are linked with the agriculture reporting systems of the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, and local level sources such as the United States Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency.
"It's an attempt to assess the acreage, production, and value of locally produced crops and livestock," said Todd. "The big picture use of this is to look at the size of the local agricultural economy. That's often done in assessing an area's productivity, the value of agriculture to a community, and the percentage of income contributed by the agricultural sector.
What Todd sees from this is a strong increase in Klamath County's agricultural income over the past year.
"We were able to rebound from the 2001 water cut-off year," said Todd. "During 2002, in addition to recovering most of the cropped acreage, we also saw significantly increased prices in a couple of sectors - to name one, potatoes.
"The total overall value (of all crops and commodities in Klamath County) is up some $18 million dollars from 2002, and some $32 million from 2001 - and one of the significant sectors that increased was potatoes."
Acres planted in potatoes in Klamath County stood at 5,900 in 2000, dipped to 2,600 acres during the water shut-off of 2001, and then rebounded to 5,250 acres in 2002. The price for potatoes per hundredweight stood at $3.12 in 2000, rose to $6 per hundredweight during 2001, and rose again to $6.75 during 2002. At the same time the overall value of sales for potatoes in Klamath County was $8.04 million in 2000, dropped to $6.89 million in 2001, and rose to $16.99 million in 2002.
"People said, 'Oh, the water cut-off didn't really hurt agriculture that much ... $20 million, something like that,' " said Todd. "But as many within agriculture have pointed out there was a lost opportunity as the grain, and more importantly the potato, prices went up during 2001, and people weren't able to take advantage of them.
"They (potato prices) remained fairly good in 2002, and that helps account for this big increase between 2000 and 2002."
In total, crops and livestock income for Klamath County stood at $129.68 million in 2000, dipped to $115.73 million during the water shut-off year of 2001, and then rose to $147.49 million during 2002.
However, when analyzing the data, Todd advises caution.
"There's some detail here that you don't see," he said. "What masked some of the suffering in 2001 was a very good livestock year, a good cattle year. It was not as affected by the water cut-off. A lot of the cattle pasture areas were outside the project for example, and it was a good market year for cattle.
"These are the gross figures, but if you look here at the detail you can probably see total agriculture went down. This increase is in spite of seeing a drop-off in livestock prices during 2002."
Other uses for the figures, beyond charting the agriculture progress of the county, is reinforcement for both producers and lenders that the local agricultural economy is in good shape.
"This is often used by financial institutions and government planning agencies," said Todd. "Maybe it has some additional value in suggesting to a lender that the economy is sound and healthy, and shouldn't be condemned overall for any weakness we saw in 2001. I don't know whether that's a reasonable use of the numbers or not, but it occurs to me that it does illustrate that point - that of a robust agricultural economy.
"And I think that there is a certain local pride amongst the farm community about the value of agriculture. When they see that we're up significantly from even two years ago, and have recovered substantially from the hit we took in 2001 - well, I think there's a certain pride, if you will, in those numbers."
Todd hastens to add that these figures only reflect the agriculture economy and trends for Klamath County. When figured regionally, he points out, the influence of agriculture is even stronger.
"I no longer attempt to put together a Basin-wide set of figures, but in general you can look at an almost mirror-image set of numbers from across the state line within the Klamath Project," he said. "This is just Klamath County. There's nearly an equal acreage, and often very close to this much additional agriculture income coming from the parts of the Basin on the other side of the state line.
"So we're just roughly looking at a quarter of a billion dollars here in this agriculture economy."
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