View from the Cab: Interesting facts

By: Kent Casson

While scrolling through social media the other day, I found some interesting Illinois agriculture facts pop up on my Facebook news feed.

Prairie Farmer released the information courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture, Illinois Department of Agriculture and the Illinois Farm Bureau.

Our state is number two in corn production on 11 million acres and Illinois tops the nation’s soybean production at 10.6 million acres. We are also at the top when it comes to horseradish and pumpkin production and number four for swine. The state has 75,087 farm operators with 27 million acres of farmland. This covers 75 percent of our area.

Annual food processing sales in Illinois total $150 billion with $14.1 billion annually from livestock. More than 2,000 food companies can be found in the Land of Lincoln with 678 million gallons of ethanol coming from 274 million bushels of corn annually. One million Illinoisans work in the food and fiber industry and the state is number five for ag commodity exports. Annual commodity exports total $6.9 billion with 44 percent of Illinois grain exported.

Commodity sales total $19 billion a year with total ag and food sales at $121 billion. This includes corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops, livestock, dairy and poultry.

These are definitely some facts to get us all thinking about how important the agriculture industry is not only to Illinois but to the entire nation and world. We may be faced with challenges throughout the year, but we still find time to be a top producer in many categories.

Our soybean harvest got moving again last week with nicer weather before the big cool down. It sure is nice to see more and more fields cleared out. That means we are closer to the home stretch of this 2021 harvest – but not quite. There are plenty of beans left to cut across our farms.

There was one evening when I noticed a farmer cutting beans in just about every field and bean dust covered the horizon at sunset. This would have been the perfect photo opportunity but I guess I was too busy driving the combine to snap a picture.

The fun family birthday season continues in the coming days on the farm with our youngest daughter Kaislee’s birthday followed by my dad’s the very next day. Some years we are all done in the field when their birthdays roll around.