Rankings · Food

Lowest leading crop share by state

Share of harvested acres in the leading crop.

This measure has no better end. The order describes the states, it does not rank them — see the other direction.

How concentrated a county's farmland is in whichever crop is biggest there. A county at 80 per cent grows essentially one thing; a county at 25 per cent grows a mix. Neither is better — concentration follows soil and climate as much as choice, and a monoculture county can be prosperous while a diverse one struggles. Read it beside the crops themselves rather than alone. Hay leads in about half of all counties because it is grown almost everywhere as livestock forage, which is why the top three are shown rather than just the first. Acres harvested, so nothing here is divided by population and the small-county caution that applies to most measures does not apply here: a county of four hundred people with ninety thousand acres of wheat is a wheat county, not a small sample. USDA Census of Agriculture 2022, taken every five years.

  1. 1Hawaii13.7%
  2. 2South Carolina25.7%
  3. 3South Dakota27.1%
  4. 4North Carolina27.8%
  5. 5Michigan30.7%
  6. 6Maryland32.0%
  7. 7Florida32.5%
  8. 8Louisiana32.5%
  9. 9New Jersey34.2%
  10. 10Missouri34.4%
  11. 11Wisconsin34.5%
  12. 12Texas36.5%
  13. 13Minnesota36.9%
  14. 14New York37.0%
  15. 15Alabama38.1%
  16. 16Tennessee39.3%
  17. 17Colorado39.5%
  18. 18North Dakota39.6%
  19. 19Pennsylvania39.7%
  20. 20Arkansas40.1%
  21. 21Delaware40.3%
  22. 22Idaho40.4%
  23. 23Kentucky40.6%
  24. 24Kansas41.5%
  25. 25Oklahoma42.5%
  26. 26Ohio42.6%
  27. 27Alaska43.6%
  28. 28Indiana44.1%
  29. 29Maine44.8%
  30. 30California45.6%
  31. 31Illinois45.9%
  32. 32Nebraska46.2%
  33. 33Vermont46.5%
  34. 34Oregon47.7%
  35. 35Mississippi49.0%
  36. 36Georgia49.2%
  37. 37Virginia50.4%
  38. 38Montana51.3%
  39. 39Iowa52.5%
  40. 40Arizona52.8%
  41. 41Massachusetts54.5%
  42. 42Rhode Island55.0%
  43. 43New Hampshire55.2%
  44. 44Washington55.2%
  45. 45New Mexico57.2%
  46. 46West Virginia72.3%
  47. 47Utah78.2%
  48. 48Wyoming83.6%
  49. 49Nevada94.0%

Not ranked, because this measure is not published for them: Connecticut, District of Columbia.

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Source: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture. · How this is built