Fun Facts

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

One bale of cotton can make 3,085 diapers.

One bushel of corn makes 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

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

About four percent of the land in Kansas is part of conservation or wetland reserve programs.

Pig farmers have reduced greenhouse gas emissions on pig farms by 35% per pound of pork by changing how crops are raised, how pigs are fed, and how nutrients are recycled.

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.

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

Kansas is the top state for growing and storing wheat.

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.

Enriched white bread and other enriched grain products are a good source of iron and B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid), as well as complex carbohydrates.

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.

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

In 2018, farmers in Kansas planted 165,000 acres of cotton, which produced about 335,000 bales!

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...

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

Did you know corn tortillas can differ in color based on the type of corn used? Some are white and others are yellow.

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

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

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

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.