Fun Facts

It takes five to six months for a pig to reach market weight (about 265 pounds). One market hog provides about 160 pounds of pork for the grocery store’s meat case.

Output from Kansas agriculture has a direct economic impact of $22.5 billion per year.

The journey from the time a calf is conceived to the time beef is consumed takes 24-30 months and thousands of miles—from ranches, farms, feed yards and packing plants to grocery stores and...

More than 87 percent of land in Kansas is farmland.

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!

About one-third of the milk produced in the U.S. is used for making cheese.

Pork tenderloin is as lean as a skinless chicken breast.

Compared with 50 years ago, pig farmers are using 41% less water to produce a pound of pork, with a 35% smaller carbon footprint.

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

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

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

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.

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

One bale of cotton can make 1,256 pillowcases.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There are more than 300 licensed dairy herds in Kansas with about 143,000 cows total. In 2015 cows produced about 365 million gallons of milk, making Kansas the 16th largest milk producing state.