Fun Facts

About a third of a steer is used for beef production. The rest of the animal is used to make by-products found in medicines, cosmetics, detergents, insulation, and much more!

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

In Kansas alone, pig farmers raised over 3.2 million pigs in 2015, producing over 600 million pounds of pork!

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 Kansas has an official state soil? It's called Harney silt loam and it covers about 4 million acres of land in our state. 

Did you know that in Kansas cows outnumber people 2-to1? There are almost 3 million people and more than 6 million cattle!

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

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!

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.

The majority of oil used for cooking in our country is U.S.-grown 100% soybean oil!

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.

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.

Enriched white bread and other enriched grain products are a good source of iron and B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid), as well as complex carbohydrates.

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.

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

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.

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

Wheat flour is a good source of complex carbohydrates and contains protein. Plus, it’s low in fat and sodium.

Did you know there are 15,000 soybean farms in Kansas? In 2016, Kansas farmers harvested more than 4 million acres of soybeans.

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