smaller sizes of farms in the region.
The census no longer reports information on home consumption, but the degree of production
for home use can be inferred from comparing the percentages of farms with inventories of a
particular livestock enterprise with those selling some of the product. For example, in 1964, only 74
percent of the U.S. farms with hog and pig inventories sold one or more animals, but by 1997 the
proportion selling hogs or pigs increased to 93 percent. Appalachian farms appeared to be more
oriented toward producing for home use in 1964, with only 42 percent of the farms reporting
inventories of hogs and pigs selling one or more of those animals; by 1997 this had increased to 75
percent but was still lower than for the U.S.
Intraregional Variations
While all the Appalachian portions of the states in the region have some similar
characteristics, there are sufficient differences to merit examination of variations among them.
Farms in all the state parts within the Appalachian Region are relatively small but considerable
variation exists among the states, with relatively larger farms existing in New York, Mississippi and
West Virginia (Tables 1 and 4, Figure 4). In Mississippi, the 1997 average size of farm in the
Appalachian counties was 276 acres compared with 323 for the state. The smallest average size was
in North Carolina, about 100 acres (compared with 185 for the entire state), with the Appalachian
parts of Tennessee and South Carolina also having relatively small average sizes. With exception
of Pennsylvania, the Appalachian portions of the states comprising the region had smaller sizes of
farms than was typical of the entire state. In Georgia and South Carolina the states’ averages were
over twice the sizes in their Appalachian areas. For the Appalachian region, the average farm size
was 152 acres compared with 196 for the total farm areas of the 13 states.
Livestock account for the major share of farm income in nearly all the ARC parts of the
Appalachian states (Figure 5). Poultry has become a leading source of cash receipts from farm
marketings in Appalachia, although beef and dairy enterprises remain important sources of farm
production and are dominant on a much larger number of farms than poultry, where relatively few
large contract operations account for most of the value of production. In 1997, poultry accounted for
nearly 95 percent of cash receipts in the Appalachian part of Georgia and over 80 percent in those
parts of Alabama and West Virginia. In these three states, poultry production has become the major
livestock’s enterprise. However, livestock accounted for only 50 percent of farm receipts in
Kentucky where tobacco is an important crop along with corn and soybeans; some 18,800 farms in
the Appalachian area of Kentucky produced over 155 million pounds of tobacco, over one third of
the state’s total. In Mississippi, about 60 percent of the value of farm sales was from crops with
corn, cotton, and soybeans being the more important sources. Nearly six million acres of hay were
harvested from a total of 10.9 million acres of cropland harvested. Much of the rest of the cropland,
another 10 million acres were in pasture as well as substantial areas of permanent and woodland
pastures; of 34.9 million acres in farms in the region only 19.2 million acres were cropland.
County Level Agricultural Patterns and Changes
Examination of agricultural characteristics at the county level results in a more refined view
of the Region’s agricultural production patterns. This is accomplished by plotting a number of