Fun Facts

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.

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

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

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

More than 87 percent of land in Kansas is farmland.

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

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.

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

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

Cotton can be found in much more than clothes and other fabrics! Cotton by-products can be used to make paper currency, cosmetics and feed for dairy cattle and livestock.

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

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

Kansas grows winter wheat that is planted and sprouts in the fall, becomes dormant in the winter, grows again in the spring and is harvested in early summer.

The average Kansas dairy cow produces about 7 gallons of milk each day. That’s more than 2,544 gallons of milk over the course of a typical year.

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

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

Kansas exports more than $4.8 billion in agricultural products per year.

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.

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.  

Did you know that Americans consume about 132 pounds of wheat flour per person each year?

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