Haywood County's Economic Dependence on Agriculture: An Input-Output Analysis

The purpose of this study was to measure the impact that agriculture and agriculturally related industries have on the economy of Haywood County. One motivation for this study was to gauge the validity of classifying Haywood County as not “farm dependent,” which is the determination using the typology codes developed by the USDA’s Economic Research Service. The method used was to collect data on the expenditures of the agricultural industry in 2010 and incorporate those into the ready-made IMPLAN input-output model. The data were primarily collected from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Haywood County USDA Farm Service Agency. The revised model with the new data was then run to produce the multipliers used to show the total impacts of agriculture on the economy. Using those multipliers an impact on proprietor income was run to show the impacts of a change in that value. The results showed that despite the large differences in agriculture data there was not a substantial difference between the models in several respects. When compared with the rest of the industries in the county, the proportions of income and employment from agriculture were consistent with the ERS typology classification. However, including the agriculturally related industries would classify Haywood County as “farm dependant.” Lastly, the results showed that agriculture had a higher impact on the rest of the economy per dollar of industry output than most other goods producing industries.