Fun Facts

Did you know Kansas has more than 2 million pigs?

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

The United States grows more soybeans than any other country and six out of every ten rows of soybeans are exported to other countries.

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

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

One bale of cotton can make 3,085 diapers.

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!

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

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

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!

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.  

Sows give birth (called farrowing) to an average of eight to twelve piglets at a time and will raise six to eight litters of piglets in their lifetime.

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

There are 7 different breeds of dairy cattle. Farmers choose their breeds based on milk production, size and even personality.

More than 87 percent of land in Kansas is farmland.

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.

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

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

One bushel of corn makes 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

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

Milk is one of the best sources of calcium. Our bodies absorb 28 percent of the calcium found in milk, but as little as 5 percent of the calcium found in other foods like spinach.