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:

1. Corn                328 million
2. Hay                 139 million
3. Sileage corn    101 million (2008 numbers)
4. Soybeans          90 million
5. Wheat               60 million
6. Sugarbeets        27 million
7. Sugarcane        26 million
8. Potatos             20 million
9. Rice                  10 miilion
10. 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):

1. Oranges            8 million
2. Grapes              6 million
3. Apples               5 million
4. Grapefruit        1 million
5. 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.