Food and Food Production Facts

As American farms have modernized—becoming more efficient, productive, and cost effective—food has become more accessible and less expensive than ever before. The average American shopping for food in the grocery store has no idea about some of the astounding numbers associated with U.S. food production. Read on to discover some fun statistics about today’s farming, as well as some of the incredible accomplishments farmers are able to achieve.

The Farm

• Today, 262% more food is produced with 2% fewer inputs (labor, seed, fertilizer, etc,) compared to 1950
• Farmers receive 12 cents for their raw products out of every dollar spent on food
• 1 million farms are headed by women, roughly 30% of all farms
• 24 million Americans are employed in the agriculture industry, accounting for 17% of the total workforce
• Today, 155 people worldwide are fed by each American farmer, up from 25.8 in 1960
• 75% of U.S. wildlife uses farm and ranch land for food and habitat

• 94 million heads of beef cattle are being raised by over 1 million farmers in the U.S (97% of those are farms family owned)
• 25% of the world’s beef is produced in the U.S. by only 10% of the world’s cattle
• 29 cuts of beef meet the government's requirement for lean
• 76 million Americans consume beef each day, each one eating an average of 65 pounds annually  
• 1 cowhide can produce 20 footballs, or 18 soccer balls, or 12 basketballs
• 720 quarter-pound hamburgers could be made from the meat of one steer  

Dairy

• 60,000 dairy farms are in the U.S. and  99% of them are family owned
• 584 pounds of dairy are consumed by the average American per year
• 7 gallons of milk are produced by the average dairy cow per day (that is 2,100 pounds per month, or 46,000 glasses a year)
• 35 gallons of water, 20 pounds of grain and concentrated feed, and 35 pounds of hay or silage (a mixture of corn and grass) are consumed by a single dairy cow in just one day
• There are 350 squirts in a gallon of milk

Grain

• 53 pounds of bread are consumed by the average American every year
• A family of 4 could survive for 10 years from the bread produced on a single acre of wheat
• The average farmer receives 5 cents (or less) from each loaf of bread sold
• 42 pounds of flour is yielded from one bushel of wheat (a modern combine can harvest  1,000 bushels an hour)
• 2.4 billion bushels of wheat are grown by U.S. farmers on only 63 million acres of land  
• 36 billion loaves of bread could be produced from a year's worth of wheat produced in Kansas, America's largest wheat-producing state

We've been keeping pace with farming’s modernization, making tires that can keep up with the demands of the industry’s newest, largest, highest-performing, and most-powerful machines. With world-class research and development teams, we're developing new tires to help farmers increase their production efficiency, lower their total cost of ownership (TCO), and reduce fuel consumption, while minimizing damage done to valuable farmland in the form of soil compaction. 

We have some numbers to be proud of as well. For example, our industry-leading line of steel-belted IF/VF farm tires can carry up to 40% more load when compared to a standard radial tire. We have more than 20 Galaxy and Alliance skid-steer patterns that are application specific and built to deliver optimum performance. We have nearly 150 different OTR tire designs to meet the needs of farmers, construction workers and foresters worldwide. Contact your local dealer to learn about some other numbers you may be interested in—such as how you can start saving money with us.