Pinal agriculture by the numbers

Feb 4, 2019

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Pinal County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution Jan. 9 to urge the state Legislature “to provide sufficient funds to Pinal Agricultural Enterprises to access the ground water necessary to allow the Pinal County agricultural economy to continue when Colorado River water is limited.”

To make its case, the resolution cites statistics on the agricultural importance of Pinal County from a 2018 study by University of Arizona’s Department of Agriculture and Resources Economics.

Top 1% in U.S. counties in cotton, cottonseed sales, milk sales, inventories of cattle and calves
Top 2% in U.S. counties in total value of agriculture sales
Top 4% in U.S. counties in acreage for barley, corn, forage crops
Top 7% in U.S. counties in vegetables, fruit and nuts production
3,804 direct jobs
1,343 indirect jobs
45% of Arizona’s cattle and calf sales

41% of Arizona’s cotton production
39% of Arizona’s milk production
33% of county’s manufacturing wages paid
25% of all manufacturing jobs
$1.1 billion in sales (2016)
The study estimated damage of $94 million to $104 million if irrigation decrease were a hypothetical water loss of 300,000 acre feet.

Source: University of Arizona’s Department of Agriculture and Resources Economics

This item appears in the February issue of InMaricopa.