Fun Facts

There are four main types of sorghum: grain, forage, biomass and sweet. Their most popular uses are: for food (grain sorghum), as livestock feed (forage sorghum), to produce bioenergy (biomass...

One dairy cow can produce more than 3,000 gallons of milk in a year. There are about 160,000 dairy cows in Kansas. That's a lot of milk!

One bushel of corn makes 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

One Kansas farmer raises enough food to feed about 155 people!

One bale of cotton can make 1,256 pillowcases.

Energy experts estimate global ethanol production and use reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 110 million metric tons per year. That’s equivalent to taking more than 20 million vehicles off the road.

Did you know Kansas has more than 2 million pigs?

Within an hour of birth calves are up and ready to nurse. A baby calf will drink a gallon of milk a day.

It takes five to six months for a pig to reach market weight (about 265 pounds). One market hog provides about 160 pounds of pork for the grocery store’s meat case.

Did you know the corn humans eat is different from the corn that cattle eat? Most of the corn people eat is sweet  corn. Cattle and other livestock eat field corn.

About one-third of the milk produced in the U.S. is used for making cheese.

The cotton gin first came to Kansas in 1854 when a Polish immigrant wanted to gin local cotton near Valley Falls.

Dairy farmers work with animal nutritionists to create recipes that meet the specific nutritional requirements of their cows. A cow’s diet is a combination of hay, grain, silage and proteins,...

About two-thirds of the Kansas corn crop is used in-state as livestock feed or in food production. 

Did you know Kansas farmers grow about 330 million bushels of wheat each year? That’s enough to make 23 billion loaves of bread!

Grain sorghum is one of the oldest known grains. Its origins can be traced back to ancient Africa and India.

One bale of cotton can make 4,312 mid-calf socks.

All the wheat grown in Kansas in a single year would fit in a train stretching from western Kansas to the Atlantic Ocean.

Did you know that Americans consume about 132 pounds of wheat flour per person each year?

Mexico and Japan are our top international corn buyers. They buy 50 percent of U.S. corn exports.

Kansas is known for its sunflowers. They provide food for insects, birds and cattle, and make great cooking oil, biofuel and a delicious snack for people!