Georgia Farms

I like to take as many breaks as possible from grading and mess with data, which is often far more interesting than the stuff I have to grade. Today, a brief look at -- believe it or not -- farms.

So below you see how the number of Georgia farms has dramatically decreased since 1945. That big drop is really post-war, with 198k farms in 1949 and 106k by 1959.



No real surprise, right? You'd expect to see exactly that. And of course, as the number of farms has shrunk, the size of an average farm has, if not supersized, did increase over the years but then peaked in 1987 at 247 acres. It's now 229 acres.



Now if you like math, play this game. In 1945 there were 225,897 farms with an average size of 105 acres. That equals, if my calculator is correct, to 23,719,185 acres. The latest numbers for 2012 have it as 42,257 farms at an average size of 228 acres, which equals 9,634,596 acres. That's hardly a surprise as the state, especially Atlanta, has grown.