Fun Facts

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 addition to meat, pigs provide us with lots of other products, including valves for human heart surgery, suede for shoes and clothing, and gelatin for many food and non-food uses.

Did you know there are 15,000 soybean farms in Kansas? In 2016, Kansas farmers harvested more than 4 million acres of soybeans.

A finished bale of cotton weighs about 480 pounds.

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.

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

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!

Kansas is the top state for growing and storing wheat.

One bushel of corn fed to livestock produces 5.6 pounds of retail beef, 13 pounds of retail pork, 19.6 pounds of chicken or 28 pounds of catfish.

A bushel of soybeans weighs 60 pounds and produces 11 pounds of oil and 48 pounds of soybean meal.

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

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

For a dessert to officially be considered ice cream, it must contain at least 10 percent milkfat.

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

Gluten-free grains have no caloric advantage over grains containing gluten like wheat, barley and rye. All carbohydrates have four calories per gram. Gluten-free foods are often higher in fat and...

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.

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

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.

The largest market for field corn is to provide feed for animals like cattle, pigs, chicken, and even catfish. 

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

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.