March 23rd through March 30th is National Ag Week, which is a time to recognize and celebrate the importance of agriculture.
Why?
Well, agriculture provides most everything we eat, use, and wear on a daily basis – and here in Ohio, the agriculture industry contributes $93 billion to the state’s economic growth and employs one out of seven Ohioans in areas such as wholesaling, retailing, farm production, marketing, processing, and agribusiness.
Ohio has a great diversity of soils, some of which are very productive. In fact, Ohio is one of only four states in which over 50% of its land is classified as “prime farmland.”
In fact, Summit County, Ohio has 334 farms, with an average size of 45 acres and has a wide variety of niche farmers.
Corn and soybeans are the top Ohio crops (3,000 acres in Summit County). Other Ohio crops are; winter wheat, hay (2,500 acres in Summit County), tomatoes, apples, grapes, poinsettia’s, sweet corn, mushrooms, maple syrup and so much more.
Ohio is ranked 5th for fresh tomato production and 3rd for processing tomatoes.
Livestock is important in Ohio too. Ohio has 1,470,000 cattle, 2,000,000 hogs, and 115,000 sheep. Ohio dairy cattle produce over 5.13 billion pounds of milk each year. Ohio poultry produce 7.1 billion, or 592 million dozen eggs per year. Ohio is ranked 16th in beef production with 15,000 beef farms that have 292,000 cows.
Below is a little agriculture trivia to share with your family and friends during National Ag Week:
- The average dairy cow produces 22.5 quarts of milk each day, that’s about 16,000 glasses of milk per year.
- Each day, a dairy cow consumes 35 gallons of water, 20 pounds of grain and concentrated feed, and 35 pounds of hay or silage.
- Apples are a member of the rose family and are high in fiber.
- The apples from one tree can fill 20 boxes every year.
- Pumpkins are 90% water and are used for feed for animals. Pumpkin flowers and seeds are edible.
- A pig can run a 7 minute mile and since it doesn’t have sweat glands, it needs to roll around in the mud to cool off.
- The horse has existed for millions of years, and has over the centuries been used for food, for their hides, for work in agriculture and industry, as a tool of war, a means of transport, for racing, competing, and for pleasure riding. There are 307,000 horses in Ohio, the majority being used for showing and recreational activities.
Could you live without farmers?