Posts Tagged: census
Census of Agriculture Now
As you may know, every five years, USDA conducts its Census of Agriculture to inform policy decisions that impact the future of American farmers and ranchers. The complete count of our nation's farms and ranches is critical as it is the most comprehensive national effort undertaken to gather?information on American agriculture.
Only 50% of California farmers have responded. This is close to the 4/20/23 national return rate of 52%, but they would like to get more input since it can affect how Congress allocates resources.
There is still time to respond to the 2022 ag census, and USDA wants to ensure that your community is being counted and adding their voices to the future of agriculture!
For more information about the
Census of Agriculture:
www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus
The information you provide will be used
for statistical purposes only. Online reporting is secure,
fast, and user friendly.
www.agcounts.usda.gov
2022-AgCensus-Brochure-english
Census picture
Where Does Ag Stand?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced the results of the 2017 Census of Agriculture, spanning some 6.4 million new points of information about America's farms and ranches and those who operate them, including new data about on-farm decision making, down to the county level. Information collected by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) directly from farmers and ranchers tells us both farm numbers and land in farms have ongoing small percentage declines since the last Census in 2012. At the same time, there continue to be more of the largest and smallest operations and fewer middle-sized farms. The average age of all farmers and ranchers continues to rise.
“The Census shows new data that can be compared to previous censuses for insights into agricultural trends and changes down to the county level,” said NASS Administrator Hubert Hamer. “While the current picture shows a consistent trend in the structure of U.S. agriculture, there are some ups and downs since the last Census as well as first-time data on topics such as military status and on-farm decision making. To make it easier to delve into the data, we are pleased to make the results available in many online formats including a new data query interface, as well as traditional data tables.”
Census data provide valuable insights into demographics, economics, land and activities on U.S. farms and ranches. Some key highlights include:
- There are 2.04 million farms and ranches (down 3.2 percent from 2012) with an average size of 441 acres (up 1.6 percent) on 900 million acres (down 1.6 percent).
- The 273,000 smallest (1-9 acres) farms make up 0.1 percent of all farmland while the 85,127 largest (2,000 or more acres) farms make up 58 percent of farmland.
- Just 105,453 farms produced 75 percent of all sales in 2017, down from 119,908 in 2012.
- Of the 2.04 million farms and ranches, the 76,865 making $1 million or more in 2017 represent just over 2/3 of the $389 billion in total value of production while the 1.56 million operations making under $50,000 represent just 2.9 percent.
- Farm expenses are $326 billion with feed, livestock purchased, hired labor, fertilizer and cash rents topping the list of farm expenses in 2017.
- Average farm income is $43,053. A total of 43.6 percent of farms had positive net cash farm income in 2017.
- Ninety-six percent of farms and ranches are family owned.
- Farms with Internet access rose from 69.6 percent in 2012 to 75.4 percent in 2017.
- A total of 133,176 farms and ranches use renewable energy producing systems, more than double the 57,299 in 2012.
- In 2017, 130,056 farms sold directly to consumers, with sales of $2.8 billion.
- Sales to retail outlets, institutions and food hubs by 28,958 operations are valued at $9 billion.
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- The average age of all producers is 57.5, up 1.2 years from 2012.
- The number of producers who have served in the military is 370,619, or 11 percent of all. They are older than the average at 67.9.
- There are 321,261 young producers age 35 or less on 240,141 farms. Farms with young producers making decisions tend to be larger than average in both acres and sales.
- More than any other age group, young producers make decisions regarding livestock, though the difference is slight.
- One in four producers is a beginning farmer with 10 or fewer years of experience and an average age of 46.3. Farms with new or beginning producers making decisions tend to be smaller than average in both acres and value of production.
- Thirty-six percent of all producers are female and 56 percent of all farms have at least one female decision maker. Farms with female producers making decisions tend to be smaller than average in both acres and value of production.
- Female producers are most heavily engaged in the day-to-day decisions along with record keeping and financial management.
More results are available in many online formats including video presentations, a new data query interface, maps, and traditional data tables. All information is available at www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus.
Ag per state
The importance of counting Latinos in the 2020 Census
No phrase better defines the American experience than the clear directive: No taxation without representation. With one set of words, a nation's value system is captured and guided into the future, giving every single resident a voice.
You'd think we would do everything in our power to protect and preserve that which makes just representation possible — like making sure the decennial census count is accurate, right?
Let's take a moment to look at lessons learned. When the British Parliament ruled this land and passed a series of taxes on stamps and sugar without consent, this phrase became the rallying call among colonists demanding fair political representation. Give us a seat at the table or forfeit your right to govern, it declared.
We know what happened next. The movement led to a series of acts of resistance — from the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress — and eventually transformed into the American Revolution, giving birth to the representative democracy we see today.
Yet here we are, 243 years later, with the United States of America bordering on reneging that sacrosanct American guarantee with an undercount of Latinos in the 2020 Census.
The U.S. Census is designed to count all residents regardless of where they live or how many people are in a given household. From that count, seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are apportioned to the states, and critical federal dollars are allocated for schools, hospitals and roads.
Clearly, the numbers matter, especially in California where billions of federal monies could be lost due to an inaccurate tally. In a state where Latinos make up nearly 40 percent of the population and contribute to its thriving economy, we need to get this right or the 2020 Census could shape up to be one of the most disastrous threats to our democracy since our founding.
A series of factors could be credited with a potential undercount. To start, this will be the first census to move online. An online census sounds ideal for reduced costs, but considering that only 54 percent of Latinos in California access the internet through broadband, compared to 69 percent of all Californians, this move will prove difficult for counting the Latino population.
The Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the census was dealt a legal blow this month when a U.S. district judge ruled adding such a question violates federal statute. But since the administration promises not to quit the threat to add the question, the mistrust that officials are breeding stands to scare immigrant and Latino communities from participating, which could lead to an even greater undercount of these populations and prevent states from their rightful share of representatives in the U.S. House.
This hits home hard in California, where more than 15 million Latinos work and live, including close to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Since California is the most populous state in the union, constitutionally speaking, it should also possess the maximum share of political representatives at the federal level. Because Latinos and immigrants were counted in the 2010 Census, California obtained the most number of members in the U.S. House at 53.
This seems like a big number, but even 10 years ago Latinos were undercounted, including more than 100,000 Latino children ages 0-4.
The Latino Community Foundation, a statewide foundation in California focused on unleashing the political power of Latinos, continues to call for a fair and accurate count of Latinos, and planning ways with like-minded groups to do so. LCF began in early 2018 to actively engage Latinos up and down the state with a roadmap to prepare for the 2020 Census.
California is also stepping up, issuing an application for community-based organizations to help conduct critical education and outreach for getting the census count right. Organizations must apply by Feb. 15 to be considered for dollars that both former Gov. Jerry Brown and current Gov. Gavin Newsom budgeted to achieve a successful count.
There is still hope in achieving a complete count, but time is getting tight. It's on us, the 57 million Latinos who live in this country and who are yearning to be politically represented.
Like our founding fathers who said that a true representative democracy derives from the will, and the taxes, of the people, it's time to view counting in the census as an act of resistance. For to resist, we must exist. The census is the mechanism to make sure all voices are represented.
Christian Arana is policy director with the Latino Community Foundation in San Francisco.
Source: Published originally on FresnoBee.com, The importance of counting Latinos in the 2020 Census, by Christian Arana , January 30, 2019.
Hispanics in the US Fast Facts
Facts: The Census Bureau describes Hispanic or Latino ethnicity as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."
Hispanic people are the largest minority in the United States. Only Mexico has a larger Hispanic population than the United States.
By 2060, the Census Bureau projects that Hispanic people will comprise over 28% of the total population with 119 million residing in the United States.
In 2016, Hispanics made up 11% of the electorate, up from 10% in 2012.
Census 2016 Estimates:
There are an estimated 55 million Hispanic people in the United States, comprising over 17% of the population.
California is the state with the largest Hispanic population -- an estimated 15 million, followed by Texas and Florida. All three of these states comprise more than half (55%) of the Hispanic population.
These are the states where more than an estimated 30% of the population is Hispanic: Arizona, 30.5%; California, 38.6%; New Mexico, 47.8%; and Texas, 38.6%.
There are more than one million Hispanic residents in nine US states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Texas.
Of the English-speaking Hispanics in the United States, a majority, an estimated 57.5%, are bilingual.
Second only to English, Spanish is the language most used in the United States, as of 2016. It is spoken by approximately 38 million Hispanic people in the country, plus an additional 2.6 million non-Hispanics.
Of the 55,199,107 Hispanic people in the United States, the following is a breakdown of how they define their race:
White: 36,294,406Some other race: 14,457,853Two or more races: 2,549,453Black: 1,143,499American Indian and Alaska Native: 513,491Asian: 189,308Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 51,097
Source: Published originally on www.kxlf.com, Hispanics in the US Fast Facts, by Antonio Flores, CNN Library, Mar 22, 2018.
Critics Say Questions About Citizenship Could Wreck Chances for an Accurate Census
WASHINGTON — A request by the Justice Department to ask people about their citizenship status in the 2020 census is stirring a broad backlash from census experts and others who say the move could wreck chances for an accurate count of the population — and, by extension, a fair redistricting of the House and state legislatures next decade.
Their fear, echoed by experts in the Census Bureau itself, is that the Trump administration's hard-line stance on immigration, and especially on undocumented migrants, will lead Latinos and other minorities, fearing prosecution, to ignore a census that tracks citizenship status.
Their failure to participate would affect population counts needed not only to apportion legislative seats, but to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money to areas that most need it.
“I can think of no action the administration could take that would be more damaging to the accuracy of the 2020 census than to add a question on citizenship,” Terri Ann Lowenthal, a consultant and leading private expert on census issues, said in an interview. “It would completely pull the rug out from under efforts to have everyone participate in the census as the Constitution envisions.”
The government has sought to count everyone living in the United States, legally and otherwise, since the first census in 1790. The decennial census has not asked all respondents whether they were citizens since 1960, although much smaller Census Bureau surveys of the population have continued to include citizenship questions.
The Justice Department request, first reported by ProPublica, was made in a Dec. 12 letter that said more detailed information on citizenship was critical to enforcing Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting.
The number of voting-age citizens is one measure used to determine whether the minority population in a legislative district is sufficient to determine an election, and the department said the results of the American Community Survey, a smaller annual review that covers about 10 percent of the population each decade, were too imprecise to be reliable.
Voting rights advocates said, however, that the data from that smaller survey had long been used effectively to enforce the law. They said that adding a citizenship question to the census would not enhance voting rights, but suppress them by reducing the head count of already undercounted minority groups, particularly the fast-growing Hispanic population.
“The first effect, of course, is on reapportionment,” Tom Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in an interview. “And that seems to be the overarching goal — to stop the shifting of representation from non-Latino states to heavily Latino states.”
A Justice Department spokesman, Devin M. O'Malley, said in a statement that the Census Bureau hac recognized that results of the American Community Survey are “not the most appropriate data” for use in districting matters. “The Justice Department is committed to free and fair elections for all Americans and has sought reinstatement of the citizenship question on the census to fulfill that commitment,” he said.
A substantial undercount would affect red and blue states alike — deeply Democratic California has nearly seven million eligible Hispanic voters, while deeply Republican Texas has nearly five million. But the true impact would fall on Democratic representation at all levels of government, because Latinos and other minorities are largely reliably Democratic constituencies.
The last census failed to find 1.5 percent of the Hispanic population, the Census Bureau said, an undercount exceeded only by the 2.1 percent of African-Americans who were missed. No reliable estimate exists of how many more might be deterred from participating in the census by a citizenship question, but among several experts interviewed, the consensus was that it could be substantial.
Even small variations can have large political consequences. In 1997, Republicans vigorously fought a proposal to statistically adjust census results to address undercounts and overcounts, in no small part because their own study suggested the tweaks could affect election results in as many as 26 of the 435 House seats.
In a so-called long-form version of the census that was dropped after 2000, about 17 percent of respondents were asked whether they were citizens, although not whether they were in the country legally. Since then, the citizenship question has been asked annually in the American Community Survey.
The citizenship question proposed by the Justice Department differs little, if at all, from the one in the American Community Survey. Experts fear, however, that requiring an answer from all Americans would cause many minorities to avoid responding to all census questions for fear that their responses would be given to other government agencies.
The dropouts would be likely to include not only undocumented migrants, but entire families who are in the country legally but who house friends or relatives who are not.
Census Bureau experts raised the same concern in a Sept. 17 memo to senior officials in which they noted a sharp rise “in respondents spontaneously expressing concerns about confidentiality in some of our pretesting studies” conducted since January, when President Trump took office. “In particular,” the memo stated, “researchers heard respondents express new concerns about topics like the ‘Muslim ban,' discomfort ‘registering' other household members by reporting their demographic characteristics, the dissolution of the ‘DACA' (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) program, repeated references to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), etc.”
“Respondents reported being told by community leaders not to open the door without a warrant signed by a judge,” the memo stated. It also reported that “researchers observed respondents falsifying names, dates of birth, and other information on household rosters.”
In a written statement, a Census Bureau spokesman, Michael C. Cook Sr., said on Tuesday that a complete and accurate census was “one of our top priorities.”
“We are evaluating the request and will process it in the same way we have historically dealt with such requests,” he said.
Several experts said, however, that the Justice Department request is all but unprecedented, at least in modern times. Census questions undergo a yearslong vetting process that includes trials and other research to ensure that a query elicits an accurate response and does not have unwanted side effects. In contrast, the Census Bureau must submit a final list of questions to Congress in less than three months — on April 1 — and will conduct only one major field test of the census process this spring.
Including a new question so late in the process effectively offers no opportunity to test and correct wording problems. And if a citizenship query did depress responses, as experts have predicted, it could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of the count: Sending enumerators to track down and interview nonresponders is by far the most expensive part of the entire process.
Source: Published originally on The New York Times, Critics Say Questions About Citizenship Could Wreck Chances for an Accurate Census, by Michael Wines, January 2nd , 2018.