Census of Agriculture apple acreage, United States and Washington

What this dataset measures

Tests the common claim that Washington grows most of America's apples using NASS, the official U.S. source for crop estimates, over a long enough period (26 years) to show year-to-year swings and the effect of NASS's 2018 reduction to seven estimated states.

Geography

Washington, United States

Unit of observation

State-year

Update cadence

Annual, after the NASS Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts summary (May)

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Curated data tables

Census of Agriculture apple acreage, United States and Washington

Apple acreage on all farms (not only commercial orchards of 100 or more trees) in every state, from the Census of Agriculture, 2002-2022.

Unit of observation: Census year

census-acreage.csv text/csv · 543 bytes

All 5 rows 11 columns Download the file

All 5 rows

census_year	us_bearing_acres acres	wa_bearing_acres acres	wa_bearing_acres_cv_pct percent	wa_share_bearing_acres_pct percent	us_total_acres acres	wa_total_acres acres	wa_share_total_acres_pct percent	second_state	second_state_bearing_acres acres	states_with_bearing_acres states
2002	401706	152241	—	37.9	464025	172810	37.24	New York	46994	45
2007	360195	152334	—	42.29	398770	165215	41.43	New York	44916	47
2012	336947	156129	3.5	46.34	384237	174152	45.32	New York	41027	48
2017	329932	158291	9.2	47.98	381718	179899	47.13	New York	43789	48
2022	363098	171373	4	47.2	411262	188973	45.95	New York	56086	46

11 field definitions

Field	Type	Meaning	Units	Value type
census_year	integer	Census of Agriculture year.	—	observed
us_bearing_acres	number	U.S. bearing apple acres, all farms.	acres	observed
wa_bearing_acres	number	Washington bearing apple acres, all farms.	acres	observed
wa_bearing_acres_cv_pct	number	NASS coefficient of variation for the Washington estimate (published from 2012).	percent	observed
wa_share_bearing_acres_pct	number	Washington's share of U.S. bearing apple acres.	percent	derived
us_total_acres	number	U.S. bearing and non-bearing apple acres.	acres	observed
wa_total_acres	number	Washington bearing and non-bearing apple acres.	acres	observed
wa_share_total_acres_pct	number	Washington's share of all U.S. apple acres.	percent	derived
second_state	string	State with the second-most bearing acres.	—	derived
second_state_bearing_acres	number	Bearing acres of that state.	acres	observed
states_with_bearing_acres	integer	Number of states with a published bearing-acre value.	states	derived

Supporting files

Source snapshots, manifests, quality reports, documentation, and other materials used to produce or review this release.

• README.md Documentation · text/markdown · 2.8 KB (2,898 bytes)

  What the dataset contains, sources by year, method, definitions and how to reproduce it.

• quality-report.md Quality report · text/markdown · 1.3 KB (1,302 bytes)

  Internal consistency checks, cross-checks between NASS files, and coverage changes.

• source-manifest.json Source manifest · application/json · 2.9 KB (2,935 bytes)

  Every raw input with its URL, Quick Stats query, byte length and SHA-256 at download.

• fetch_sources.js Transformation manifest · text/javascript · 4 KB (4,108 bytes)

  Downloads the raw NASS and ERS files (Quick Stats web export and ESMIS reports).

• analyze.js Transformation manifest · text/javascript · 16.9 KB (17,284 bytes)

  Parses the raw files and computes every share and comparison.

• build_release.js Transformation manifest · text/javascript · 37.6 KB (38,498 bytes)

  Writes the CSV tables, documentation and this dataset payload.

• dataset-metadata.json Data dictionary · application/json · 46.1 KB (47,233 bytes)

  Machine-readable sources, table and field definitions, saved analyses with their structured results, and replications for this release.

Sources

1. USDA NASS Quick Stats: apples, survey program, state and national, annual (query source_desc=SURVEY&sector_desc=CROPS&group_desc=FRUIT & TREE NUTS&commodity_desc=APPLES&statisticcat_desc=PRODUCTION&statisticcat_desc=AREA BEARING&agg_level_desc=STATE&agg_level_desc=NATIONAL&freq_desc=ANNUAL&reference_period_desc=YEAR) Primary data, 2007-2025 estimates and 2026 forecast

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

2. USDA NASS Quick Stats: apples, Census of Agriculture, state and national (query source_desc=CENSUS&sector_desc=CROPS&group_desc=FRUIT & TREE NUTS&commodity_desc=APPLES&agg_level_desc=STATE&agg_level_desc=NATIONAL&freq_desc=ANNUAL&reference_period_desc=YEAR) Primary data, all-farm apple acreage 2002-2022

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

3. USDA NASS, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2002 Summary (Fr Nt 3-1 (03)), July 8, 2003 Primary data, 2000-2002 estimates

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

   Archived copy captured October 9, 2026

4. USDA NASS, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2005 Summary, July 6, 2006 Primary data, 2003-2004 estimates

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

   Archived copy captured October 9, 2026

5. USDA NASS, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2007 Summary (revised), July 8, 2008 Primary data, 2005-2006 estimates; cross-check for 2007

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

   Archived copy captured October 9, 2026

6. USDA NASS, Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2025 Summary, May 2026 Cross-check for 2023-2025 and definition of commercial orchards

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

   Archived copy captured September 26, 2026

7. USDA ERS, Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook: September 2026 (FTS-386), September 24, 2026 External comparison: Washington share of fresh-market apples; 2026 forecast context

   Retrieved October 9, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted; U.S. federal government data are not subject to copyright.

   Archived copy captured October 9, 2026

Limitations and reproducibility

Fully reproducible: fetch_sources.js downloads every raw file from NASS Quick Stats (web export) and USDA ESMIS; analyze.js and build_release.js rebuild every table and saved analysis with Node.js 20 and no packages. Quick Stats returns current values, so later NASS revisions can change 2007-2025 figures slightly.

• Since 2018 NASS estimates apples in only seven states (CA, MI, NY, OR, PA, VA, WA) and its published U.S. total is their sum, so shares from 2018 are of a seven-state total. A sensitivity analysis estimates the effect at about 3 to 4 percentage points.
• NASS estimates cover commercial orchards with 100 or more bearing trees; the Census of Agriculture table covers all farms.
• Values for 2000-2006 come from the NASS annual summaries as revised in July 2003, 2006 and 2008; NASS may have revised them later, but Quick Stats does not carry state survey estimates before 2007.
• Value of production is nominal and depends on NASS price estimates, which mix fresh and processing prices.
• Shares describe Washington's production relative to other states; they say nothing about consumption or exports.
• The Wayback Machine could not capture the two Quick Stats CSV exports (repeated HTTP 520/523 errors on 2026-10-09). Their SHA-256 digests are recorded on the sources and in source-manifest.json, and fetch_sources.js re-creates the same exports; a re-download on 2026-10-09 returned identical bytes.