This result demonstrates that there is a strong consensus among the residents of Portage County that agriculture should be preserved. No significant differences existed among groups. Not a single respondent strongly disagreed with this statement. Here again there was no statistical difference between groups, which indicates that even the residents of less than five years themselves are saying that residents who just moved to the county do not want to preserve agriculture. Evidently what they mean is that new residents other than themselves are not interested in preserving agriculture.
Agriculture is a major contributor to the economic base in Portage County.
The high rate of agreement on this statement across all groups reveals that respondents value agriculture not only for aesthetic reasons, but also as a viable industry with important economic impact in the community. People move to Portage County for rural character. Portage County is a farming community. Here there was an extremely strong level of statistical difference between farm and non-farm groups. This demonstrates that there is a major difference in the way that the county is perceived by the different groups, and probably means that the conceptions of what it is that constitutes a farming community are radically different between farmers and non-farmers.