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Ranked: America’s Top Crops by Acres Harvested in 2023

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Ranked: America’s Top Crops by Acres Harvested in 2023

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Most of the American tilled farmland is taken up by one of three top crops. And interestingly, wheat isn’t one of them.

This graphic breaks down the most harvested crops in the U.S., by acres reaped in 2023. Data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Corn is King in America

By acreage, corn is the most planted crop in the U.S., covering 93 million acres, an area almost the size of Montana.

Rank Crop Area Harvested (2023, Acres)
1 Corn 93M
2 Soybean 82M
3 Hay 53M
4 Wheat 37M
5 Cotton 7M
6 Sorghum 6M
7 Rice 3M
8 Barley 3M
9 Canola 2M
10 Peanuts 2M
11 Sunflower 1M
12 Dry edible beans 1M
13 Sugar beets 1M
14 Potatoes 960K
15 Dry edible peas 941K
16 Sugarcane 932K
17 Oats 831K
18 Proso Millet 572K
19 Lentils 523K
20 Chickpeas 359K
21 Rye 322K
22 Mustard seed 238K
23 Tobacco 188K
24 Flaxseed 160K
25 Safflower 126K
26 Hops 54K
27 Peppermint 31K
28 Spearmint 12K
29 Rapeseed 10K
N/A Total 298M

Note: Figures rounded.

Meanwhile, soybean (82 million acres) could blanket New Mexico, and hay (53 million acres) could spread over Kansas.

All together, their fields together account for 75% of all harvested cropland in the country, an area more than the size of Texas.

However, this isn’t the full picture. Corn and soybean may be separated by about 11 million cultivated acres between them, but their output gap is much larger.

Yields of Fields

America produced more than 500 million metric tons of corn in 2023 compared to 113 million metric tons of soybean.

As it happens, corn yields, (measured in bushels per acre) are nearly 4x higher than soybean yields. More than a hundred years of research and investment has quite literally made America a corn country. On average it accounts for one-third of global corn production far eclipsing closest competitor China.

Importantly corn, soybean, and hay are used mostly for animal feed in America, though corn is also used for biofuels and manufacturing high fructose corn syrup.

Other major crops by area harvested include: cotton (7 million acres), sorghum (6 million acres), rice, barley, and canola (all 2 million acres each).

Learn More on the Voronoi App

For related content check out Comparing Corn Yields to Wheat and Soybean which tracks bushels per acre produced for these three crops over a hundred years.

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