Mapping the Farm Bill: Farm and Farm Operators

According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, the United States is home to 2,109,303 farms. The Census defines a farm as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, in the reference year. The distribution of farms across Congressional districts (114thCongress) is shown in Figure 1. As expected, farms are heavily concentrated in the Great Plains, Midwest, and Mississippi Delta regions.  As we discussed previously, the traditional farm coalition is comprised of three major commodities: corn, cotton, and wheat. We used recent USDA production information to identify the widest possible political footprint of each of these three commodities. That included every county in a Congressional district that contains at least some portion identified as a major production county for the crop. In sum, the entire coalition spans 152 Congressional Districts. According to the Census, the Congressional districts within that traditional coalition are home to approximately 63% of U.S. farms (1,333,289 farms). The number of farms, however, is only one part of the picture for the farm coalition. Each farm recorded in the Census likely impacts the livelihood of several individuals. All of politics eventually boils down to votes and voters; therefore, a fuller picture of the political strength of the farm coalition requires an indication of the potential voters in the footprint. Accordingly, we examine the distribution of farm operators by Congressional district as a measure of potential votes in Figure 2.