Fun Facts

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

One acre of soybeans can make 82,368 crayons!

The top five agiculture commodities in Kansas are cattle, corn, wheat, soybeans and sorghum.

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

One bale of cotton can make 3,085 diapers.

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.

A finished bale of cotton weighs about 480 pounds.

Did you know cotton is becoming a big crop in Kansas? Last year, farmers here produced over 164 million pounds of cotton! 

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.

Kansas is the top state for growing and storing wheat.

Pork tenderloin is as lean as a skinless chicken breast.

One cowhide can produce enough leather to make 20 footballs, 18 soccer balls, 18 volleyballs or 12 basketballs.