Fun Facts

Cotton bolls, which are the puffs of white produced by cotton plants, are technically fruit.

In pre-refrigeration days, hogs were harvested in the fall and cured for six to seven months, just in time for Easter dinner. That’s how ham came to be the traditional Easter favorite.

A common ingredient in fertilizer is phosphate, which comes from ancient sea life. Phosphate is one of many natural ingredients used to keep soil — and plants! — healthy.

Sorghum can be used to make environmentally-friendly packing peanuts, fencing materials, floral arrangements, brooms and more!

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...

Did you know some of the fertilizer farmers add to the soil comes from the air we breathe? Companies can convert nitrogen in the air into nitrogen to nourish the ground.

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

Small engines like lawnmowers and boats can use E10 fuel.

Gluten is what helps bread expand while the dough rises, and hold its shape while baking and after it cools. It’s also what makes bread chewy.

In Kansas alone, pig farmers raised over 3.2 million pigs in 2015, producing over 600 million pounds of pork!

The journey from the time a calf is conceived to the time beef is consumed takes 24-30 months and thousands of miles—from ranches, farms, feed yards and packing plants to grocery stores and...

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,...

Soybean oil is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E.

Corn is produced on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica. 

Did you know Kansas has an official state soil? It's called Harney silt loam and it covers about 4 million acres of land in our state. 

Farmers in Kansas grow more than 650 million bushels of corn each year. 

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

Output from Kansas agriculture has a direct economic impact of $22.5 billion per year.

Looking for a gluten-free grain? Try sorghum! It's gluten-free and packed with protein, iron, vitamin B-6, niacin, magnesium and phosphorus.  

There are more than 29 cuts of beef that meet government guidelines for lean, including tenderloin, T-bone steak and extra lean ground beef.

Cattle are great recyclers. They convert natural resources that would otherwise be wasted into beef, an edible protein containing 10 essential nutrients such as zinc, iron and B vitamins.