Farm proprietors (farmers) and Farm workers (employees): Comparing Kern and San Joaquin Counties (and a lesson in basic economic data prompted by an error from the PPIC experts)

Kern County (highly dependent on Delta water) generates about 20% more agricultural revenue than the 5 Delta Counties combined.  However, there are 4 times more farm proprietors in the 5 Delta Counties than Kern (about 9,000 vs 2,250 according to BEA which is based on tax returns). 
Comparing Kern County to San Joaquin County (by far the biggest Delta ag county) in the 2007 Census of Agriculture reveals that Kern County has 2,117 farms that average 1,116 acres.  In contrast, San Joaquin County has 3,624 farms that average 204 acres.  Ag receipts in Kern are about $4 billion a year, roughly double the $2 billion in San Joaquin.  Kern County has nearly 3 times as many agricultural employees than San Joaquin County (45,000 vs 15,000), but about half the number of farm proprietors.

Although their rhetoric is over the top, it does show that there is some truth behind Delta partisans portrayal of themselves as small family farms versus big "corporate" farms.

The prompt for this is my effort to figure out why the jobs multipliers for Delta agriculture (about 10 per $1 million) in the new PPIC/Davis report are so much smaller than what they have used for Westlands and Kern (ranging from 20 - 50 jobs per $1 million).  This inconsistency without explanation is pretty amazing, and in reading their technical appendix it is clear that they still don't get some of these basics about self-employment, jobs and impact modeling even after the embarrasing series of botched drought impact reports in 2009.  For example, this incredible statement in the new Delta report (technical appendix, page 16) regarding their results "scenarios may overstate the level of employment in crop production, because IMPLAN's ratios of jobs to revenues are somewhat higher than those measured by other sources."  They go on to compare IMPLAN employment data to California EDD jobs data and note (correctly) that IMPLAN is almost 50% higher.  But these jobs data are apples and oranges.  IMPLAN employment data includes self-employment (i.e. farm proprietors) and the EDD data does not.  This is fundamental, and as noted above there are about 9,000 farm proprietors in Delta counties plus some self-employment in ag. services and that completely accounts for the discrepancy they noted.  Nothing wrong with the data at all. 

Apparantly, this is the reason they do not to adjust the production functions for agriculture in the Delta like they have done in other studies for the rest of the Valley, and even worse to argue that you are probably overstating the results is terribly wrong.  Their employment multipliers of about 10 per $1 million are way too low, and they are greatly understating the Delta ag impacts.

A few months ago, they wrote in ARE update, "In general, one million dollars in lost farm revenue translates into a range of 15 to 28 direct agricultural jobs lost."  I agree with that statement, but as noted above their Delta impacts are 10 and they are arguing that they are probably overstated.  Unbelievable.