(Radio Iowa) — I-S-U economist David Swenson has done a new study that finds agriculture and manufacturing account for 38 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.  “I have a kind of economic analysis that we can do that tracks the entire supply chain for the industry as they sell primarily what we call export sales — and that’s domestic export if we are selling to Chicago — or of course international export if we are selling to China or Germany,” Swenson says.

Swenson says those agriculture and food processing account for many jobs when you look at them together.He says when you look at both agriculture and the food processing sectors entire supply chain — the number of jobs dependent on the two sectors is 17-point-on percent.  He says the job impact gets even bigger when you figure in things like farm equipment manufacturers. “Agriculture plus all of its ag-related industries explains about 19 percent of jobs and about 20 percent of the state’s G-D-P. That’s a number then that people can use and declare how important is agriculture and those related industries? Nineteen percent of jobs, 20 percent of G-D-P,” Swenson says.

He says the pandemic has hit all those areas hard. Swenson says the state should be able to recover once we are able to get beyond the COVID-19 impact. “That national economy was really strong as we went into this period with the pandemic,” according to Swenson. “The Iowa economy wasn’t growing — but it was stable at the time we went into this pandemic. It has basically gone into a time of zero growth, but relative stability. So, we have reasonably good foundations for recovery once recovery comes.”

Swenson says there should be hope for the future. “We have something good to return to — this hasn’t destroyed a lot of the economy. But, it remains to be seen how this all plays out and how many businesses actually survive,” Swenson says. He says the ripple effect through the economy from the impact on ag could take some time to turn around when the coronavirus situation goes away.