although many crops are produced in commercially significant quantities. Agriculture in the region
is quite varied, as might be expected for an area that stretches from New York to Alabama.
A relatively large proportion of the Appalachian Region’s population is located in rural rather
than urban areas, although urbanization has increased and several cities have grown rapidly while
rural populations have tended to decline (Isserman 1996a, 1996b, Rogers and Cushing 1996). In the
central part of Appalachia, however, there are no large urban centers and a major share of the
population remains rural. Thus, while the majority of the population is located in urban settings, the
region is more rural than for the U.S. although much of the Plains and Mountain States west of the
Mississippi River also is very rural.
Data Sources
The primary sources of data for this analysis of Appalachian agriculture are the 1997 and
1964 of the Censuses of Agriculture. Additional information was obtained from publications by
Coltrane and Baum (1965), Colyer (1976), Maher (1967), Economic Research Service, USDA (ERS
2000), and Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC 2000). Census data are reported for states and
counties, but not for the Appalachian Region or for that part of each state. Thus, the county data had
to be aggregated for the Appalachian portion of each state and then combined to get regional totals
and averages. All regional averages are weighted by number of farms, acres of land, or other
appropriate measures to obtain regional averages.
Results and Discussion
This section is divided into four parts. First, overall changes in the region are analyzed and
compared with those for the U.S. Then, patterns and changes within the individual state parts of the
Appalachian are examined. In the following subsection, attention is given to county level changes
and patterns on the Region’s agricultural characteristics followed by an examination of productivity
and specialization. Then niche/specialty crops and other sources of farm income are reviewed.
Finally, off-farm work and its impacts on the agriculture of the region are examined.
Regional Patterns and Changes in Agriculture
The census data indicate that progress has been made in the agriculture of the region,
although today’s Appalachian farms retain some of the characteristics reported by Coltrane and
Baum (1965). Between 1964 and 1997, the average size and value of products produced by farms
in Appalachia both increased substantially (Figure 1 and Table 1). The average size of farm
increased from 122 acres in 1964 to 152 acres in 1997. Cash receipts from farm marketings per farm
also increased, in both nominal and real terms, with the real value in 1997 dollars being $25,193 in
1965 compared with $44,751 in 1997 (Figure 2). However, when compared with the U.S.,
agriculture in the Appalachian Region continues to be characterized by smaller size farms and lower
incomes; average farm size for the U.S. in 1997 was 497 acres with per farm sales of over $102,000.
In 1997, there were 230,050 farms in Appalachia consisting of a total of 34.9 million acres,
a 36.5 percent decline from the nearly 55.0 million acres reported for 1964. For the U.S., land in
farms also declined but only by 16.1 percent, dropping from 1,110 million acres in 1964 to about 932
million in 1997. In Appalachia, more than 75 percent of the farms are under 180 acres while only