New Study Shows How Much Tribal Agriculture in Arizona is Growing

A newly released report has revealed tribal agriculture in Arizona contributed $753.3 million in total economic output and directly supported more than 2,300 jobs statewide in 2022. The report is a first-of-its-kind analysis examining the economic footprint of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes using data from the most recent agricultural census.

The report, “Tribal Agriculture in Arizona: An Economic Contribution Analysis” was conducted by Cooperative Extension economic analysts in the University of Arizona College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences and was supported by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation and the Native American Agriculture Fund.

Arizona’s Indigenous communities have practiced agriculture for thousands of years, developing farming systems grounded in traditional ecological knowledge, water management and biodiversity. These practices remain central to tribal economies, cultural identity and food sovereignty today, yet the overall economic contribution of tribal agriculture across the state has received little study.

“We have always known that tribal agriculture is a huge share of Arizona agriculture in terms of the number of producers, the amount of land that these operations manage, and it has sort of an outsized effect on the state-level numbers,” says Dari Duval, corresponding author on the report and an Extension economist in UA’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment.

Some Key Findings

• The analysis revealed American Indians operate 62% of all farms in Arizona and manage 20 million acres, or 81% of the state’s total agricultural land.
• While numerous, many operations are categorized as “small-scale,” with 67% of American Indian farms falling in between 1 and 9 acres in size.
• Despite that, on-farm sales from tribal agriculture totaled $434 million in 2022, with crop production accounting for $410 million and livestock production contributing $23.9 million.
• American Indian farms also account for 95% of all sheep and goat farms and 71% of vegetable and melon farms in the state.

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