Cover STory
An Economic Report
Tennessee’s Sod Industry:
By Burton C. English, Jamey Menard, Kim Jensen, Jim Brosnan and Chris Boyer
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series reporting from the publication, Tennessee’s Turfgrass Industry: Economic Contributions, Problematic Issues and Perceptions of Future Growth, published in June 2015.
T
urfgrass requires human action. These actions result in expenditures by turfgrass producers, manufacturing and services, and users for goods and services, land, labor, capital equipment and other materials — expenditures that enhance the local economy and the local tax base. One measure to comprehend the growth of the turfgrass industry over the past few decades is to analyze sodharvested data provided by the USDA’s Census of Agriculture. Focusing on acres of sod harvested from 1978 through 2012, harvested acres increased from 191 to 10,021 acres in Tennessee (see Figure 1). The growth in sod-harvested 20
acres averaged 98.6% per year for Tennessee during this timeframe. Figure 2 shows the number of sod farms for Tennessee in 2007 and 2012. In 2007, there were a total of 52 sod producers in the state, and 41 were reported in 2012. In 2007, the top counties for number of sod producers were Hardin, Davidson, Fayette, Gibson, Lincoln, Robertson and Shelby. In 2012, this same cluster of counties had the largest number of sod producers, with the exception of Davidson and Gibson and with the addition of Haywood. Tennessee sod harvested acres for 2007 and 2012 totaled 11,329 and 10,021 acres, respectively. A total of 19 sod producers responded
TENNESSEE TURFGRASS october/november 2016 Email TTA at: tnturfgrassassn@aol.com
to our survey, which was conducted from September 15, 2014, to January 31, 2015.
General results from the survey For the 19 sod producers that responded to our survey, the average acres of land owned and rented for sod production were 407.8 (N=19) and 231.1 (N=9) acres, respectively. The average length of time producers were in the sod production business was 18.6 years (N=19). For those producers responding in acres (N=14), an average of 170.0 acres of sod was harvested; for those responding in square yards (N=5), the