University of Nevada Coooperative Extension

Content

NEVADA
  Nevada Department of Agriculture
  University of Nevada Coooperative Extension

Program Description
Nevada is the fastest growing State in the nation, with 2.3 million people in 2004. 94% of the people live in cities larger than 25,000 people. Las Vegas alone is growing at the rate of 6,000 per month and opens a school a month. The other major urban area (Reno / Sparks / Carson City) is also growing rapidly. Only 21% of Nevada’s residents were born in the state.

Nevada’s landscape is largely arid to semi-arid desert rangelands, with croplands adjacent to the limited number of rivers and streams. Approximately 87% of Nevada’s 70 million acres is federally owned. The Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service are the main government agencies responsible for management of approximately 76% of Nevada’s total land area.
Only 9% of Nevada’s land area is farmland, of which 78.6% is pasture or range, 14.9% is cropland, 0.7% woodland and 5.9% is house lots, ponds, roads, etc. Over 90% of Nevada is considered range, with approximately 80% of the land available for livestock grazing at certain times of the year.

Farming/ranching in Nevada is mostly in large operations and small ranchettes, with few small farms in the traditional sense in other parts of the United States. Of Nevada’s 3,000 farms/ranches, 55% are under 99 acres with 11% being over 2,000 acres. Yet the average size of farms/ranches is 2,115 acres. In 2003, the top five agricultural commodities were cattle and calves, hay, dairy products, onions, and potatoes.

Contact
John E. Burton, Assistant Director
Dean & Director’s Office / MS 404,
Reno, NV 89557-0106.
Phone: (775) 784-7070
Fax: (775) 784-7079
Email: BurtonJ@unce.unr.edu

Support our developers

Buy Us A Coffee