"Okay...everybody got their calculators?  Now get out there and count every farm and everything on every farm down to the last chicken and cantaloupe."

     I can't imagine how such a task is accomplished with any degree of accuracy, but somehow it seems to get done every five years.  The National Agricultural Statistics Service's 2007 Census of Agriculture was recently released for public viewing and scrutiny.  It's the Baseball Encyclopedia of agriculture.  The report contains hundreds of pages of agricultural statistics delineated down to every county in each state.

     Let's focus our trek through the new census on Fond du Lac County.  Officially, there are 1,643 farms in the county with an average size of 204 acres.  This is almost exactly the same number of farms as was reported in the previous 2002 census.  Average farm size actually decreased by seven acres.  The total amount of land in farms decreased by 2 percent, or 8500 acres (a loss of 1700 acres per year).  About 83 percent of the land in farms is devoted to crop production.

     In 2007 the market value of agricultural production sold from county farms totaled over 290 million dollars (Anybody out there who doesn't think agriculture has an impact on the economy?).  About 66 percent of that value was attributed to milk or other dairy products sold off the farm, while 18.6 percent was for grains and oilseeds.

     Of the 1,643 farms in the county, 721 had total sales of less than $10,000 and nearly 500 of those had sales less than $1000.  These we can categorize into the small hobby farm category and it's an entity that is seeing sustained growth.

     The number of dairy farms in the county decreased from 447 in 2002 to 382 in 2007.  However, the number of dairy cows increased by nearly five thousand to 47,256.  The number of dairy operations with less than 50 cows has now dropped to 97 farms (down from 122 in 2002).  Conversely, the number of farms with more than 200 cows increased from 36 to 48 between 2002 and 2007.

     About 40 percent of the nearly 280 thousand acres of county crop land is planted to corn and harvested as either grain or silage.  Corn silage acres now account for nearly 25 percent of the total corn acres.  Hay crops account for the next largest portion of crop acres at 23 percent (63,489 acres) followed by soybeans at 14 percent (40,207 acres).  Vegetables and winter wheat each comprise about 6 percent of total crop acres.  There were over 3500 acres of crop land under organic production in 2007.

     Now let's take a closer look at the Fond du Lac County principle farm operator.  Ninety-two percent are male and the average age has risen to over 56 years old.  The average number of years living on their present farm is 25.  Less than 60 farms are operated by someone under the age of 35.  Forty-eight percent of farm operators have a primary occupation other than farming.  Fifty-nine percent of farms have internet access and about 41 percent of those have high-speed access.

     How does Fond du Lac County compare to other counties in the state and nation?  Within the state, we rank in the top ten for total value of products sold (5); acres of corn grain(9), forage (10), soybeans (7), wheat (1), corn silage (7), and vegetables (5); number of milk cows (5), pheasants (5) and quail (1); and the value of milk/dairy products sold (4).  Nationwide, we are the 26^th leading county in value of milk/dairy products sold and 24^th overall for the production of corn silage. 

     This has been just a snapshot of the some of the types of numbers provided in the 2007 Census of Agriculture.  Many more nuggets of information are available viewing and printing on the census web site: www.agcensus.usda.gov .  In addition to numbers, users are able to generate maps and customize reports.  There are also summary pages for each county and state.