California Ag counties and COVID19

Agriculture--feeding us--is big business.   Almost $400 Billion dollars per year in cash crops.  All 50 states produce cash crops, ranging from $30M in Alaska to $50B in California.   Eleven contiguous California counties (of California's 58) account for 75% of California's total agricultural output, and three San Joaquin Valley counties -- Fresno, Tulare, and Kern counties -- are 70% of those eleven.    These three counties alone produce roughly the value of Iowa, the #2 state in America.    Among 30 major crops (more than $100M each), they deliver 90% or more of products like almonds, pistachios, pomegranates, and nectarines for America.  Surprisingly, Tulare County (the smallest of the three) produces one-third as much milk as the Diary State, Wisconsin.  Who'd have thought that?

And this is not counting wine.   Yes, 'AG Cash Crops' plots the grapes sold externally, but wine is considered a processed product, and hence "not agricultural" by definition.   California produces 89% of America's wine, a $700B market.  

But we're here to consider Covid19, and its potential impact on America's food supply.   We plot herein eleven counties, all primarily rural, none more than a million people, half of them Hispanic, with few towns of size, low per capita income rates, and by urban standards, low education achievement and health services.  

Being somewhat isolated has been an advantage for rural areas during the Covid19 pandemic, punctuated by hotspots in food processing plants as well as nursing homes, prisons, and retailing.
And, of course, the absolute numbers are small.   These eleven counties have  five million residents,  just one-half that of Los Angeles County itself.

Thus, meaningful statistics for these counties therefore must be per capita measures rather than absolute.  But trend lines--7 day moving averages, for example -- and Cases per 100K, or Deaths per 100K, can give us meaningful comparison data.

How about an example or two?  These are cumulative for March, April, May and early June.  They are compiled from our InnovaScapes Institute Covid19 Dashboard https://anywhereanytime.io/covid19/

The first example shows the "new case rate" for each county:



The second example shows the per capita Case Rate and Death Rate for the eleven counties, both in table format and in geospatial map.  Tulare, with five to ten times the death rate of the other ten counties (worth asking WHY on that one!), sticks out like a sore thumb on the geospatial map