Date of Graduation

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

Committee Chair

Cheryl Brown

Abstract

Although the organic market has experienced rapid growth in recent decades, growth in production has not been distributed evenly across the country, instead concentrating in certain regions. Employing measures of spatial concentration and association, we identify those counties in which organic production is clustered or represents a proportion of the agricultural economy greater than would be expected by national trends. Results show that spatial clustering of organic agriculture does exist. Large location quotients for organic production were most often found for the western U.S., the Great Plains states, and New England. Clusters measured by the local Moran’s I statistic followed a similar pattern. When these values were adjusted to represent organic agriculture’s share of a county’s total agriculture, central cluster counties were most likely to be found in New England. Results describing the correlation between organic support establishments and production within identified clusters suggest that organic operations in California and New England may be following different marketing strategies that promote or reduce the likelihood of identifying input-output relationships within these clusters.

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