Iowa’s Top 10 Ag Products (Infographic)

With some of the richest and most productive soil in the world, over 90 percent of Iowa’s land is used for agriculture. Leading Iowa ag products, which are produced on more than 30 million acres of farmland, include corn, soybeans, hogs and eggs. Red meat is a leading product, too, and 6.6 billion pounds of red meat were manufactured in 2014.

Check out the helpful infographic below showing the top 10 Iowa ag products, based on 2015 cash receipts, plus a fun fact about each. Feel free to share on Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter, or contact us to reprint.

Want to learn more about U.S. agriculture? See top ag products from other states by browsing our collection of digital magazines.

What’s Growing in Iowa?

• Corn – $8.08 billion: Field corn is different from the corn we eat. Hard and dry, it’s used to feed livestock and make ethanol.
• Hogs – $7.51 billion: Pork is the most widely eaten meat. It represents about 42 percent of all meat eaten in the world.
• Cattle and Calves – $4.41 billion: A steer typically weighs about 1,000 pounds and yields about 450 pounds of edible meat.
• Soybeans – $4.33 billion: Soybeans are an important ingredient in crayons. In fact, just 1 acre of soybeans can make 82,368 crayons.
• Chicken Eggs – $1.53 billion: U.S. poultry farms provide about 10 percent of the world’s egg supply, or 75 billion eggs each year.
• Dairy Products – $835 million: A dairy cow produces about 6.3 gallons of milk each day and 350,000 glasses of milk in a lifetime.
• Turkeys – $287 million: About 675 million pounds of turkey are consumed during Thanksgiving every year in the U.S.
• Hay – $119 million: Sheep and goats refuse to eat trampled hay, but cows and horses will gobble it up.
• Broilers – $34.5 million: The U.S. has the largest broiler chicken industry in the world and consumes more chicken than anyone else.
• Oats – $5.58 million: The oat species avena sativa accounts for 75 percent of the world’s oat production.