The latest statewide report on the economic impact of agriculture in North Carolina found that the food, fiber and forestry sector employed 20% of North Carolinians and generated $117 billion in economic impact in 2024.
To understand where those statistics come from and how they fit into the larger economic picture of the state’s $844 billion economy, we consulted the source: Jeffrey Dorfman, Hugh C. Kiger Distinguished Professor of agriculture and resource economics at NC State University. Dorfman, who authored the report, made the calculations this year, using the latest available data, which is from 2024.
In the report, what do you include as part of the $117 billion economic impact of agriculture?
For this report, I am defining agriculture as the food, fiber and forestry sector. The economic impact includes all the stages from growing and raising farm products until we eat, wear or use them. This definition is the one that NC State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have used for more than 40 years.
This total includes input suppliers, such as tractor dealers and fertilizer sellers for production agriculture, as well as processing of the commodities produced, including turkey, pickles, cotton fabric, cigarettes, and wood and paper products, among others. That means we are including restaurants and grocery stores, plus the garden sections at your neighborhood nursery or big box store.
If we looked at production agriculture alone, that would eliminate the food processing and restaurant industries that supply many of our meals. But since almost none of us grind our own flour or eat only whole fruit picked from a tree, that doesn’t provide a complete picture of how food moves from the field to our plates.
Source : ncsu.edu