Fun Facts

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

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.

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

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

Grains can be categorized into food grains (for people) and feed grains (for cattle). Cattle eat feed grains like field corn and grain sorghum. An average of 4 ½ pounds of grain is used to produce a...

One bale of cotton can make 1,256 pillowcases.

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

Dairy farmers work with animal nutritionists to create recipes that meet the specific nutritional requirements of their cows. A cow’s diet is a combination of hay, grain, silage and proteins,...

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

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

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

Gluten is what helps bread expand while the dough rises, and hold its shape while baking and after it cools. It’s also what makes bread chewy.

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

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

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.  

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

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!

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.

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