Data from: Heterogeneity in US Farms: A New Clustering by Production Potentials

The units of analysis in this research are counties in the 48 contiguous US states (excluding the states of Alaska and Hawaii) with data on 15 variables related to agricultural production potential. The total number of counties in the 48 contiguous states is 3142; 364 were excluded due to missing data on one or more production potential variables, resulting in a sample size in the dataset of 2778. For each variable and county, we took an average of the values of that variable in the county from the 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 Census of Agriculture. This multi-year average mitigates the impact of weather and economic variability in the analysis. The 15 production potential variables are: (1) Labor, hired—number of workers; (2) Percentage of labor hired who worked more than 150 days in a year; (3) Farm operations—area operated, measured in acres/operation; (4) Machinery totals—asset value, measured in dollars/operation; (5) Land area, including non-ag acres; (6) Govt. programs, federal, conservation, and wetlands—acres; (7) Ag land (excl. cropland, pastureland, and woodland)—acres; (8) Ag land (excluding cropland, pastureland, and woodland)—acres/operation; (9) Ag land, including buildings—asset value, measured in dollars/acre; (10) Ag land, including buildings—asset value, measured in dollars/operation; (11) Sales, measured in dollars/operation; (12) Ag land, including buildings—asset value, measured in dollars; (13) Ag land—treated with fertilizer, measured in acres; (14) Total retail consumption in dollars; and (15) Utility expenses, measured in dollars/operation. Monetary variables were adjusted for inflation using the U.S. GDP deflator to express them in 2012 dollars, before taking averages across years.The article that used this dataset is at https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/2/258<br>