How Many Tons of Stuff do we Produce
The USDA just recently produced their Crop Production report for 2009. Being a stats nut, I always like to look through the report. This time, I thought I would share with you the total amount of food that the US produces in metric tons. Lots of food items are counted in bushels, bales, tons, etc. but the USDA summarizes the major food catagories by metric tons.
The top ton food items by metric tons for 2009 are:
- Corn 328 million
- Hay 139 million
- Sileage corn 101 million (2008 numbers)
- Soybeans 90 million
- Wheat 60 million
- Sugarbeets 27 million
- Sugarcane 26 million
- Potatos 20 million
- Rice 10 miilion
- Sorghum 9 million
Total grain and hay production was about 655 million metric tons. Total oilseed production was about 98 million metric tons. Cotton, sugar products and potatos and related ended up at about 79 million totals.
Fruit products are much smaller than most of the grains, but here are the 5 largest fruit crops (in metric tons):
- Oranges 8 million
- Grapes 6 million
- Apples 5 million
- Grapefruit 1 million
- Peaches 1 million
Total fruit production was about 24 million metric tons.
Overall food production for all products ended up at about 856 million metric tons. If there are about 300 million people in the US, this equals production of about 3 metric tons or almost 7,000 pounds per person in the US. We can see that a large portion of your production is exported.
Paul Neiffer is a certified public accountant and business advisor specializing in income taxation, accounting services, and succession planning for farmers and agribusiness processors. Paul is a principal with CliftonLarsonAllen in Walla Walla, Washington, as well as a regular speaker at national conferences and contributor at agweb.com. Raised on a farm in central Washington, he has been immersed in the ag industry his entire life, including the last 30 years professionally. Paul and his wife purchase an 180 acre ranch in 2016 and enjoy keeping it full of animals.
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