We were honored to attend the 48th annual Missouri Governor’s Conference on Agriculture and receive the Missouri Farm Innovation award. The award recognizes individuals that strive to innovate their farm or ranch, give back to their communities, commit to land stewardship or stand as a great example for future generations.
Missouri Farm Innovation award to Matt and Jessica Hardecke
While at the conference, we also got a glimpse of some of Missouri’s leading agriculture products. Here are a few numbers that we found interesting that we thought we’d share. All bullet points are from the 2019 Missouri Grown magazine.
- Missouri’s agriculture industry contributes approximately $88.4 billion to the state’s economy each year.
- There are 99,171 total farms in Missouri, and those farms cover 28.2 million acres across the state
- 378,232 jobs are provided by Missouri agriculture
- Missouri is home to 2.2 million beef cattle and ranks within the top 10 nationally according to recent U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- In 2017, Missouri farmers planted 3.4 million acres of corn, produced 552.5 million bushels of corn grain, and sold $1.6 billion cash receipts*
- Soybeans are Missouri’s number 1 crop in both number of acres and value, with more than 5 million acres planted throughout Missouri each year.
- Missouri is home to around 3.4 million hogs.
- Missouri is 4th in the U.S. for turkey production. The turkey industry supports over 12,000 jobs.
- Missouri farmers in the Bootheel harvested 297,000 acres of cotton in 2017.
- Missouri ranks 10th in the nation for broiler chickens (chickens raised for meat)
*cash receipts: Defined by the USDA Economic Research Service, cash receipts refer to the total amount of crops or livestock sold in a calendar year.
