Fun Facts

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

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

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!

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

A finished bale of cotton weighs about 480 pounds.

98 percent of all corn farms are family-run farms.

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...

Within an hour of birth calves are up and ready to nurse. A baby calf will drink a gallon of milk a day.

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

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

One 60-pound bushel of wheat provides about 42 pounds of white flour, enough for about 70, one-pound loaves of white bread.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

One bushel of corn makes 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

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