Agriculture is a major industry in the United States and the country is a net exporter of food.

History of agriculture in the USA

In the U.S., farms spread from the colonies westward along with the settlers. In cooler regions, wheat was often the crop of choice when lands were newly settled, leading to a "wheat frontier" that moved westward over the course of years. Also very common in the antebellum midwest was farming corn while raising hogs, complementing each other especially since it was difficult to get grain to market before the canals and railroads. After the "wheat frontier" had passed through an area, more diversified farms including dairy cattle generally took its place. Warmer regions saw plantings of cotton and herds of beef cattle . In the early colonial south, raising tobacco and cotton was common, especially slave labor until the Civil War. In the northeast, slaves were used in agriculture until the early 19th century, and in the Midwest, slavery was prohibited from the beginning since the Freedom Ordinance of 1787.

Soybeans were not widely cultivated in the United States until the 1950s, when soybeans began to replace oats and wheat.

Significant areas of farmland were abandoned during the Great Depression and incorporated into nascent national forests. Later, "Sodbuster" and "Swampbuster" restrictions written into federal farm programs starting in the 1970s reversed a decades-long trend of habitat destruction that began in 1942 when farmers were encouraged to plant all possible land in support of the war effort. In the United States, federal programs administered through local Soil and Water Conservation Districts provide technical assistance and partial funding to farmers who wish to implement management practices to conserve soil and limit erosion.

Major agricultural products

The top twenty agricultural products of the United States by value as reported by the FAO in 2003 (ranked in order of value with volume in metric tons):

1. Corn 256,904,992
2. Cattle Meat 11,736,300
3. Cow's Milk, Whole, Fresh 78,155,000
4. Chicken Meat 15,006,000
5. Soybeans 65,795,300
6. Pig meat 8,574,290
7. Wheat 63,589,820
8. Cotton Lint 3,967,810
9. Hen Eggs 5,141,000
10. Turkey Meat 2,584,200
11. Tomatoes 12,275,000
12. Potatoes 20,821,930
13. Grapes 6,125,670
14. Oranges 10,473,450
15. Rice, Paddy 9,033,610
16. Apples 4,241,810
17. Sorghum 10,445,900
18. Lettuce 4,490,000
19. Cottonseed 6,072,690
20. Sugar Beets 27,764,390

The only other crops to ever appear in the top twenty in the last 40 years were, commonly, tobacco, barley, and oats, and, rarely, peanuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds (in all, only 26 of the 188 crops the FAO tracks). Alfalfa and hay would both be in the top ten in 2003 if they were tracked by FAO.

Crops

The major field crops with the value of production (in $billions) are:

• Corn,$24.4
• Soybean,$17.7
• Wheat,$8.6
• Alfalfa,$8.3
• Cotton,$6.1
• Hay, other than alfalfa, $5.1
• Tobacco,$3.0
• Rice, $1.7
• Sorghum,$1.4
• Barley,$.9

Source: 1997 USDA-NASS reports, http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/ranking/rankus-b.txt.

Note alfalfa and hay are not tracked by the FAO and the production of tobacco in the U.S. has fallen 60% between 1997 and 2003.

Livestock

The major livestock industries in the United States are:

• Dairy Cattle
• Beef Cattle
• Swine (also called hogs or pigs)
• Poultry
• Sheep

Inventories in the United States at the end of 1997 were:

• 403,000,000 chickens
• 99,500,000 cattle
• 59,900,000 hogs
• 7,600,000 sheep

Goats, horses, turkeys and bees are also raised, though in lesser quantities. Inventory data is not as readily available as for the major industries. For the three major goat-producing states (AZ, NM, and TX) there were 1,200,000 goats at the end of 2002. There were 5,300,000 horses in the United States at the end of 1998. There were 2,500,000 colonies of bees at the end of 2002.

Governance

Agriculture is both a federal and a local responsibility with the United States Department of Agriculture being the federal department responsible. The US pays massive subsidies to its farmers, which allow them to compete with the rest of the world, despite much higher costs. Agriculture is an extremely powerful interest group in American politics.