Ag Trivia

I love Ag trivia and for years I have been collecting all kinds of ag trivia from many different sources.   I plan to continue to add to this list so keep coming back to check for new info.  FYI…….figures may change from year to year, so I do not guarantee complete accuracy.    
Here you go…………Some fun trivia about agriculture. 

• 90% of US farms are operated by individuals or family corporations.
• 15% of jobs for the US population are provided by agriculture.
• Roughly 2% of the US population live on farms.  
• Ag land provides habitat for 75% of the nation’s wildlife.

An acre of land is roughly the size of a football field.  On that acre, a farmer can produce 24,000 heads of lettuce ~ 50,000 pounds of strawberries ~ 36,000 pounds of potatoes ~ 28,800 pounds of navel oranges ~ 14,000 pounds of sweet corn ~ 821 pounds of cotton.

• The same chemicals that gives tart cherries their color may relieve pain better than aspirin and ibuprofen in humans.  Eating about 20 tart cherries a day could reduce inflammatory pain and headache pain.

An average milk cow produces 350,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

• The dairy cow, in one day, consumes:   
• 35 gallons of water
• 20 lbs of grain and concentrated feed 
• 35 lbs of hay or silage  

American’s farmers and ranchers produce 10 percent of total world food production on 16 percent of the world’s harvested land.  A total of more than 914 million acres in the U.S. is devoted to farming-either as cropland, timberland or for fish farming.

• Consumers spend $547 billion on food originating on US. farms and ranches.  Of each dollar spent on food, the farmer’s share is approximately 23 cents.  The rest are for costs beyond the farm gate: processing, marketing, transportation, and distribution.

Americans today consume 17.3 billion quarts of popped popcorn each year.  The average American eats about 68 quarts! 

• The potato is the world’s fourth most important food crop
• The average American eats 126 pounds of potatoes a year
• Approximately 1/3 of all potatoes grown in the US are grown in the state of Idaho
• The Potato is a vegetable
• The Potato was the first vegetable grown in outer space
• At a White House dinner in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson was the first person to serve french fries in the United States.
• Frozen Potatoes, including french fries, are the number one prepared style of potatoes in the US. Americans eat more than 16 pounds of French Fries every year. That’s over 2 million tons!
• 62% of all Idaho potatoes that are harvested are used to make frozen or instant potatoes
• New York consumes more potatoes than any other state, followed by Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas

50% of turkey consumed in 1970 was on a holiday.  Today 31% is consumed on a holiday.
46 million turkeys are eaten at Thanksgiving, 22 million at Christmas, and 19 million at Easter.
88% of the population eat turkey at Thanksgiving dinner.   

• The bright orange color of carrots tell you they’re an excellent source of Vitamin A, which is important for good eyesight, especially at night.  Vitamin A helps your body fight infection, and keeps your skin and hair healthy.   

The bovine’s complex, 4-compartment stomach enables it to digest and convert all types of vegetation indigestible by humans, into energy and important “building blocks” of the body.  The simple human system cannot utilize vegetation efficiently, and therefore these potentially valuable resources would be wasted if we didn’t get them from another source.  

• The average cow has more than 40,000 jaw movements per day.  

A farmer wears many career hats.  He is a chemist, an environmentalist, a botanist, an entomologist, an accountant, a weather forecaster, a mechanic, and a marketing expert.  

• Brown and white eggs have the same nutritional value.

Idaho produces over 180 different commodities. 

• A cow spends six hours eating and eight hours chewing its cud each day.