You are steeped in agriculture. You might not know it, but you are. It doesn't matter if you live in Sioux Falls, Brookings, Yankton, Aberdeen, Mitchell or Rapid City, South Dakota. You're neck-deep in agriculture.
You might work in a hospital. Maybe the Post Office. You could be an IT person, maybe work all day on a computer in an office. Heck, you might be a radio announcer. It doesn't matter. You depend on South Dakota's top agriculture products each and every day. You DO eat, right?
It may come as a shock (but probably not) that South Dakota is rural. We're a "farm/ranch" state, and doggone proud of it. That farm you drive by every day? That ranch you read about? They fuel this state.
Do you know the 10 biggest South Dakota agricultural products?
And perhaps the first question you have is, how do you define "Agricultural Products"? Well, for our purposes here, the ag products are based on cash receipts. These numbers come from the FarmFlavor website and reflect cash receipts from 2015. I'd assume the numbers have probably grown in the past few years. So first make your guesses and and check out the Top 10 below:
#10: Chicken Eggs-$73.6 Million Might be a little hard to believe until you find out U.S. poultry farms provide 10% of the world's egg supply.
#9: Turkeys-$147 Million We do gobble up a lot of turkeys, in fact about 675 million pounds are consumed during each Thanksgiving in the U.S.
#8: Hay-$170 Million You see a lot of these bad boys driving the highways and gravel roads. The cows and horses love it.
#7: Sunflowers-$216 Million These supply more Vitamin E than any other vegetable oil. And they nice to look at too.
#6 Dairy Products-$435 Million This lady and her friends produce about 6.3 gallons of milk each and every day.
Source: kikn.com
Categories: South Dakota, Crops, Fruits and Vegetables, General, Livestock, Beef Cattle, Dairy Cattle, Poultry