Some Fun Facts About Farming

The Agricultural Statistics Board of the United States Department of Agriculture publishes many reports during the year.  I find it interesting to review these on a periodic basis (my wife does not seem to think this is much fun).  Some of the fun facts that I recently spotted were:

Texas is about four times larger in size than Iowa, but Iowa has the largest amount of acreage committed to the principal crops grown in the US.  There is about 320 million acres of cropland committed to the principal crops grown in the US.  These crops comprise:

• Corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, barley, oats, rice, peanuts, cotton, potatoes, sunflowers, canola, millet, sugar beets, and dry edible beans.

  The top five state based upon acres is:

1.  Iowa – 25.1 million acres

2.  Illinois – 23.0 million acres

3.  Kansas – 22.7 million acres

4.  Texas – 21.9 million acres

5.  North Dakota – 21.6 million acres

The top five states farm about 114 million acres, which is about 36% of the total acres for the US.

The top corn state is Iowa at 13.4 million acres with Illinois right behind at 12.1 million acres and Nebraska coming in third at 9.2 million acres.

The top wheat state is Kansas at 8.8 million acres with North Dakota not too far behind at 8.5 million acres and Montana third at 5.2 million acres.

The top hay state is Texas at 4.5 million acres.  Missouri is second at 3.6 million acres and Oklahoma comes in third at 2.7 million acres.

Iowa has the most soybean acres at 9.8 million, Illinois is second at 9.0 million and Minnesota is third at 7.1 million acres.

Texas grows more than three times the acres of cotton than the next closest state of Arizona.  Texas has 3.3 million acres, while Arizona only has 615 thousand acres.  Actually Texas has abour 43% of the total acres grown to cotton in the US.