Monterey County agriculture pumps $8.12 billion into the local economy and supports more than 76,000 jobs, Agricultural Commissioner Eric Lauritzen announced as he released an updated report of a comprehensive economic analysis of the county’s leading industry on June 30, 2015.
Ag Commissioner Lauritzen opens the report with the following statement:
After more than 80 years of publishing traditional Crop Reports, we published a new kind of report in April 2012. Instead of merely looking at crop production values and acreage, we quantified agriculture’s total economic contribution through food production, local food processing, employment and economic “multiplier effects.” In short, we asked the question “What role does agriculture play in sustaining a healthy local economy?