Farms flourishing? Data on Utah deceiving, experts say

Something surprising is happening in Utah agriculture:

Despite ever-expanding housing subdivisions that cover more farmland each year along the urban Wasatch Front, the federal government says farms statewide are still growing both in number and in overall acreage.

In fact, new federal data show that Utah ranks No. 2 in the nation for the percentage of land added to agricultural uses between 1995 and 2005. That's up 1.8 percent, or 200,000 acres (an area about three times the size of Salt Lake City).

Utah is one of only seven states that saw any such increase in that time, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data analyzed by the Deseret Morning News. Nationally, the amount of land used in farming decreased by 4 percent over the decade — a huge 38.9 million acres, about the size of Georgia.

But, as Mark Twain once said, there are lies, damned lies and then statistics. And Utah agriculture experts say these new statistics may initially lead to incorrect assumptions about the true picture of Utah farming.

They say most of the farmland increases here may come because the federal government has begun counting some larger suburban lots as "farms," even though they were not counted previously and may be home to only one or two horses or cows.

However, experts say some more authentic increases may come from land that is newly farmable because of improved irrigation systems and new water supplies. And they say some increases also may be attributed to farmers who sell out in urban areas and then buy much bigger replacement farms in rural regions.

"But anyone who argues that we haven't cemented over our farmland in Salt Lake, Weber, Davis and Utah counties has been up too long in the night," says Bruce Godfrey, a professor of agricultural economics at Utah State University.

Skewed statistics?

USDA surveys report that Utah had 15,200 farms last year, up from 13,400 in 1995. Also, they say Utah farms covered 11.6 million acres last year, up from 11.4 million acres a decade earlier.

But Randy Parker, chief executive officer of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, says a kink in how the federal government defines "farm" may have led to including larger suburban lots in the counts. That may account for apparent increases despite loss of much prime farmland to urban sprawl.

The federal definition of a farm, which has not changed since 1974, is "any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year."