02/07/06 Washington farm numbers decline

Washington Ag February 7, 2006 The trend of declining farm numbers and of land involved in farming continues in Washington state. Joe Parsons of the Washington Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Olympia has the latest numbers on the changes between 2004 and 2005. Parsons: "There was a decline of 500 farms in the state from 35,000 to 34-thousand-500. Also the amount of land in farms declined from 15.2 million to 15.1 million acres. Most of those declines took place on the smallest of farms." The economic category of the smallest farms are those whose annual sales and government program payments are under ten-thousand dollars. The number of farms in the 10-thousand to 250-thousand dollar sales categories were stable. The state lost 100 farms in 250-thousand to 500-thousand dollar in sales and payment category, while the largest operations, those with sales and government payments in excess of 500-thousand dollars annually increased by 100 in number. Overall the average size farm in Washington increased by four acres to 438 acres but by category the average size ranges from 53 acres for the small farms to an average of over 26-hundred acres for the highest economic sales class. I'm Bob Hoff.