General Business Data

The U.S. Census Bureau is a good source of general business patterns data. In particular, the Bureau completes an Economic Census every 5 years, with the most recent version compiled using 2002 data (USCB 2006). The data are summarized for geographic units as fine-scale as ZIP code areas. Types of information that are available include per-area dollar values of sales, receipts, or shipments for a particular industry class, as well as per-area counts of the number of businesses within a particular industry class. By linking the Economic Census data to GIS data layers, it is possible to map region-to-region patterns in business activities, and—using information from a previous Economic Census—to highlight short-term growth or decline in business sectors of interest. Economic Census data sets may be downloaded via the Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder file transfer protocol (FTP) interface (USCB 2006) or are available on DVD-ROMs purchasable by subscription (USCB 2006).

With respect to the agricultural business sector, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) issues summary reports on production of a wide variety of crops, including nursery plants (see the NASS Web site for access to a wide range of reports, http://www.nass.usda.gov/index.asp). Data tables in these summary reports are typically available as ASCII files. Similar to the Commodity Flow Survey, the attribute resolution for a given data table depends on the degree of geographic detail. For example, regarding the sudden oak death pathogen (Phytophthora ramorum), one might be interested in nursery stock production coming out of California, Oregon, and Washington. A national-scale NASS report on nursery crops lists the total number of producers and sales quantities for 18 States (including the above three States), broken down into specific nursery stock type (e.g., broadleaf evergreens, a category that includes the most significant hosts of P. ramorum) (USDA-NASS 2004). However, the report only details operations with greater than $10,000 in annual sales. In contrast, regularly issued State-level Census of Agriculture reports list the number of all farms that normally have greater than $1,000 in sales, as well as the total greenhouse and open-air acreages per county for broader crop categories such as all nursery stock (e.g., USDA-NASS 2004). Notably, if a county has just a few operations in a given crop category, greenhouse and open acreages are withheld to protect farmowner privacy.