Fun Facts

Drink local with milk! It takes about 48 hours for milk to travel from dairy farms to the grocery store.

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

A finished bale of cotton weighs about 480 pounds.

In 2015 Kansas had 6.3 million cattle on ranches and in feedyards (third highest in the nation). That's a little over twice the state's human population of more than 2.9 million!

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

Fertilizer contains a lot of helpful nutrients, thanks to Mother Nature! Potash, which is salt from ancient evaporated oceans, is used in fertilizer to feed our soil.

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

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

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

One bushel of corn makes 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

There are about 60-80 pods on a mature soybean plant. Each pod contains three small soybeans.

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.

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.

Grains can be categorized into food grains (for people) and feed grains (for cattle). Cattle eat feed grains like field corn and grain sorghum. An average of 4 ½ pounds of grain is used to produce a...

In 2016 Kansas farmers will harvest 264 million bushels of grain sorghum off 2.9 million acres.  That’s a 91 bushel average, up 3 bushels per acre from last year.

Kansas is the top state for growing and storing wheat.

Beef from cows and steers are used in two different ways. . Cow meat is used primarily as ground beef for hamburgers and the majority of steer meat is used as steaks.

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.

Did you know that in Kansas cows outnumber people 2-to1? There are almost 3 million people and more than 6 million cattle!

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

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