Source: Mackensy Lunsford, ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES, 4/20/19

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week the results of the 2017 Census of Agriculture, and there's good news and bad news for Western North Carolina.  While Buncombe County saw modest increases in fruit and vegetable farms, and also gained a small number of farms —  from 1,269 farms in 2012 to 1,288 in the latest census — the number of farms declined in the region as a whole.

For more of this story, click here.