by

Fred Swift

Hamilton County Reporter

An interesting publication by the Hamilton County Farm Bureau caught my eye this week when visiting the county courthouse. Included in statistics from the Farm Bureau is the fact that half of the county’s 400 square-mile area is devoted to farming despite all the residential and commercial development.

The information tells an interesting story about agriculture in our county. For example, the market value of farm products is about $100 million annually, which makes farming probably our biggest purely local industry.

There are now about 325,000 people living in Hamilton County with most of them in the southern half. There are only 585 working farms, most of them north of 196th Street, which is the county’s north/south division line.

Most years at least 50,000 acres are devoted to corn production, nearly 60,000 to soybeans and around 1,200 acres of wheat. The remainder is pasture and woodland.

While figures are two years old, the report says 8.3 million bushels of corn are produced in the county, 3 million bushels of beans and 84,000 bushels of wheat.

Total net income to farmers annually is listed at $29.9 million. The assessed value of the county’s farmland was placed at $233 million two years ago, and property taxes paid on this ground was a little over $4.3 million each year.

It’s probably all rather surprising for folks who have come to think of Hamilton County as being suburban. In fact, virtually half the county is still highly productive, rural farm country.