Agricultural Economy of Sevier River Basin, Utah

Excerpts from the report: The Sevier River Basin includes 5,250,000 acres or 8,203 square miles. The Sevier River drainage includes parts of eight counties--Kane, Iron, Garfield, Piute, Sevier, Sanpete, Juab, and Millard. Proportions of counties in the drainage vary from the major parts of Piute, Sevier, and Sanpete Counties to only small fractions of Kane and Iron Counties. The Tropic area of Garfield County, which is in the Colorado River Basin was included because water originating in the basin is diverted to this area for irrigation purposes. There are about 12.5 million acres in the six-county area. The Federal Government owns 81 percent and the State 6 percent of the total area (table 1). Indian land, urban areas, and water surface areas account for .5 percent of the land area. This leaves only 12.5 percent of the area to private ownership. Not all the land available for private uses is used for agricultural purposes. However, some lands owned by the Federal and State Government are used by individuals for agricultural purposes. The purpose of the economics portion of the Sevier River Basin study is to appraise present and potential agricultural uses of water and related land resources, and to identify profit-maximizing farm organizations under various distributions of resources among farms and areas. This report is presented in two major sections which include; (1) the resources and trends in their use, and (2) the characteristics and use of agriculture resources by economic areas.