PENNSYLVANIA Number of farms declines

The rate of farmland loss is slowing, the agriculture secretary says.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- The government released its five-year agriculture census Thursday, showing fewer farms in Pennsylvania since 1997, but farms that on average are larger and recording more in sales.
In addition, the state's dairy cow population slid while the population of swine and beef cows rose.
The number of farms in Pennsylvania dropped to 58,105 in 2002 from 60,222 in 1997, mirroring a national trend, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Similarly, Pennsylvania's total farm acreage slid to less than 7.75 million from 7.82 million, although Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said he believes the rate at which the state is losing farmland is slowing.
"Some of the concerning trends are slowing down," Wolff said, crediting Pennsylvania's 15-year-old farmland preservation program, the nation's largest.
The average size of a farm rose from 130 acres to 133 acres. With family or individual ownership of farms growing slightly to 91.6 percent, Wolff said he believes the figures dispel the notion that farms increasingly are run by larger corporations.
What numbers show
Most farms are on the smaller side, and increasingly so, according to the statistics. Nearly 80 percent are 179 acres or smaller and 61 percent sold less than $10,000 in goods.
The figures are compiled every five years using information from questionnaires returned by farmers, said Marc Tosiano, the state statistician for National Agricultural Statistics Service. This year, 88 percent of the questionnaires were returned, and statisticians made projections for the remainder that were not returned, he said.
While the state's value of agricultural products sold directly for human consumption rose slightly to $53.7 million in 2002, Pennsylvania dropped from second to third among states in that indicator since 1997.
It remained 19th in the value of all farm sales, rising about $10 million to $4.25 billion. More than two-thirds of that value was attributed to animals, and nearly half of the animal-product sales are from dairy operations, according to the figures.
Though Pennsylvania's bread-and-butter dairy industry is slowing -- it's the nation's fourth-largest -- the population of swine and beef cows rose from 1997 to 2002.
The number of beef cows rose 28 percent to 212,234 while swine rose 12 percent to 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of dairy cows fell more than 5 percent to 591,531.
Wolff attributed the changes to the increasing per-cow production of milk, but no similar increases in consumption, and the fact that Pennsylvania has a lot of meatpacking plants, making it a cost-efficient place to raise an animal for slaughter. He also cited an increased demand for meat as a factor.