Since 2008, over 13,000 jobs related to agriculture have been created. According to a new study released from the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, the agriculture production and processing sectors generate half a billion dollars in state and local tax revenue.
However, it is not just the state’s rural areas that are impacted by this growth.
Dr. Ruby Ward of Utah State University, who authored the study, said that food manufacturing in urban areas show that the agricultural sector’s reach in the state economy is significant.
“Where some of the agricultural production happened, we always thought of that in more of the rural areas. It’s true that in some of our rural areas. It’s true that in some of our rural counties, the agricultural production can be 50 percent of the economy like Salt Lake, there’s almost 49,000 manufacturing jobs total and about 10 percent of those—9 percent—are coming from food manufacturing. A lot of that manufacturing is going on in more of our urban areas,” Ward said.
In the years following the Great Recession, Utah’s agricultural sector bounced back faster than the rest of the state. Agricultural production outpaced the gross state product by 21 percent. Ward said that the state benefited from an increase in prices.
“Utah is not setting the prices for most agriculture products. They’re based upon national and international markets. Part of this is what’s going on in cattle markets, dairy markets, what’s going on in the fruits and vegetables,” she said. “I can’t say that Utah has drove where the prices were, but we saw some significant good prices over those years in agriculture and agriculture commodities.”
Utah’s agricultural sector also contributes over $500 million dollars in federal taxes.
