Each year the Montana Department of Agriculture, in coordination with the US Department of Agriculture, prints a Montana Agricultural Statistics bulletin, which presents the data on a wide variety of agricultural information from across the state, some of which is broken down by county. We recently received the 2023 bulletin and wanted to relate the pertinent data for Powder River County.
Between 2021 and 2023, the number of cattle in Powder River County dropped around 12%, from 83,000 to 73,000. That drop in percentage is in line with the state drop in cattle numbers, from 2,450,000 to 2,160,000 over the same time period.
Statewide the highest cattle inventory by year was in 1974, with 3,380,000 head of cattle in the state. The lowest was 1867 (the first year of available data, nine years before Custer met his demise at Little Bighorn) with 67,000 head of cattle in the state.
1934 was the top year for sheep and lamb inventory statewide, with 4,280,000 head, while 2020 was the lowest, with 200,000 head. That data stretches back to 1920.
Powder River County had 9,700 head of sheep in 2021, dropping to 9,200 in 2022 and 2023. Our neighbors in Carter County had 19,000 head of sheep in 2021, dropping to 18,000 in '22 and '23.
The only farming crops where data for Powder River County is available in the booklet is for barley and spring wheat; other crops such as winter wheat are not shown for Powder River County. In cases where there is minimal planting within the county the data is collected into an "other counties" list, in order to avoid disclosure of individual information.
In 2022, 3,400 acres of barley was planted in PR County, with 1,080 acres harvested, yielding 35,300 bushels of barley, or 32.7 bushels per acre. Statewide just over 1 million acres were planted with 840,000 acres harvested, yielding over 34 million bushels and averaging 41 bushels per acre.
The record high yield years for barley statewide were 2010 and 2020, with 63 bushels per acre, while the record low was 1919, with 12 bushels per acre. Barley data stretches back to 1879.
2,100 acres of spring wheat were planted in 2022 in Powder River County, with all acreage harvested, yielding 20.7 bushels per acre. Statewide in 2022, 2.7 million acres were planted, averaging 25 bushels per acre.
The record year statewide for spring wheat was 1951, where over 4.5 million acres were planted. 1995 had the highest yield, with 133 million bushels of spring wheat harvested, and both 2010 and 2020 had the highest yields, with 38 bushels per acre. Contrast that with 1919 (the first year of available spring wheat data), which had a yield of 4.9 bushels per acre. That year also had the lowest number of bushels harvested, at 5.7 million. 1969 had the lowest number of acres planted, at 1.1 million acres.
In the case of alfalfa hay statewide, 2019 was the highest year of planted acreage, with 2,100,000 acres planted. That year there were 4,415,000 tons of alfalfa hay harvested. The highest yield year was 1981, with 2.6 tons per acre averaged across the state. As a matter of comparison, the Dust Bowl year of 1935 marked the lowest yield, with 1.2 tons per acre. 1919, the year alfalfa hay data was first collected, had the lowest acreage harvested, with 650,000 acres statewide, and it also had the lowest production, with 347,000 tons of alfalfa hay.
Meanwhile 1910 had the smallest production of all hay types and harvested acreage, with 1,125,000 acres harvested and 1,283,000 tons of hay produced. The lightest yield of all hay was in 1936, with 0.88 tons per acre harvested. Contrast that with 1995, where 2.23 tons per acre were harvested, in the highest yield year.
Overall the bulletin, now in its 60th year of printing, provides an interesting insight into Montana's largest industry, helping feed the nation and parts beyond. The info provided in this article is only a small sampling of the 50 plus pages of charts and data in the bulletin. The info is available online at http://www.nass.usda.gov/mt.
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