If you’ve ever driven down a rural road lined with fields of cotton plants festooned with fluffy bolls and wondered how much cotton is grown in your county, forget Google — the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development (CAED) has what you need.
Each year experts in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) perform the Sisyphean task of compiling agricultural production data for every commodity produced in the state down to county-level figures through the Farm Gate Value Report.
“The Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics conduct a proprietary study each year that provides communities much-needed information to help them understand the role that agriculture and related industries play,” said Sharon Kane, agribusiness and community development economist with CAED. “This includes detailed data at both the statewide and county levels and provides a unique annual data source presenting Georgia-specific insights not found elsewhere.”
Validating economic impact
Each spring the experts at CAED partner with UGA Cooperative Extension to capture the prior year’s agricultural data using a proprietary survey. The survey was developed after John McKissick, emeritus Extension coordinator for the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, was appointed director of CAED in 2000.
The origins of the survey started in UGA Extension’s Southwest District with former director Darrell Dunn, who sought a way to quantify the economic impact of the area’s agricultural production values. At the time, county agents would gather information on certain commodities produced in their service areas and report it at the district level, and later it was expanded across the state because people recognized that this was valuable data, McKissick said.
When McKissick became director of CAED, he was tasked with creating a formalized system agents…
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