South Dakota’s Top Agricultural Products

Valentine, Nebraska

November 14, 2022

Agriculture is South Dakota’s leading industry.

On average, around 3 million acres of several kinds of wheat are planted in the Mount Rushmore State each year – hard red winter, hard red spring and durum. Other notable South Dakota ag products are soybeans, sunflowers, beef, pork, oats, barley, rye, flaxseed, sorghum and alfalfa.

What’s Growing in South Dakota?

Cattle and Calves – $2.63 billion: A steer typically weighs about 1,000 pounds and yields about 450 pounds of edible meat.

Corn – $2.37 billion: Field corn is different from the corn we eat. Hard and dry, it’s used to feed livestock and make ethanol.

Soybeans – $1.84 billion: Soybeans are an important ingredient in crayons. In fact, just 1 acre of soybeans can make 82,368 crayons.

Wheat – $549 million: A bushel of wheat yields 42 one-and-a-half pound loaves of white bread or 90 one-pound loaves of whole-wheat bread.

Hogs – $452 million: Pork is the most widely eaten meat. It represents about 42 percent of all the meat eaten in the world.

Dairy Products – $435 million: A dairy cow produces about 6.3 gallons of milk each day and 350,000 glasses of milk in a lifetime.

Sunflower – $216 million: Light in taste and noted for its health benefits, sunflower oil supplies more vitamin E than any other vegetable oil.

Hay – $170 million: Sheep and goats refuse to eat trampled hay, but cows and horses will gobble it up.

Turkeys – $147 million: About 675 million pounds of turkey are consumed during Thanksgiving every year in the United States.

Chicken Eggs – $73.6 million: U.S. poultry farms provide about 10 percent of the world’s egg supply, or 75 billion eggs each year.