Big numbers illustrate state's biggest industry

They say money doesn't grow on trees, but arborists, Christmas tree farmers, plant nursery owners and the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, might beg to differ.

In fact, money DOES grow on trees, fields and feedlots in Nebraska, or at least the products that turn into cash for Nebraska's agriculture industry and the businesses that support or benefit from it, which are nearly all of them.

Today's Gazette includes 12 extra pages saluting National Agriculture Week, in addition to the regular agriculture pages which are published on Thursdays.

Just how important is agriculture?

We wrote several stories about Nebraska taking the lead in cattle on feed, and beef production is not a difficult case to make.

Our state was first in commercial red meat production in 2013, 7.353 billion pounds. We slaughtered 6.8 million head of cattle, 9.4 billion pounds of live weight, had 2.4 million cattle on feed as of Jan. 1, 2014, and 6.1 million cattle and calves on the same date.

We're no slouches when it comes to "the other white meat," either. We had 3.1 million hogs and pigs on farms on Dec. 1, slaughtered nearly 7.6 million head of hogs in 2013 for 2 billion pounds of live weight.

Those cattle and hogs, as well as ethanol plants and other markets, had access to 1.6 billion bushes of corn for gran production, and $1.1 billion in corn was exported in 2012.

We produced 270 million pounds of dry edible beans, 4.5 million bushels of proso millet, 252 million bushels of soybeans, 9.3 million bushels of milo, 2.4 million tons of alfalfa, and had 9.257 chickens laying eggs for the nation's tables.

What does all that ag production mean?

Well, cash receipts from all livestock and products in 2012 was $11.8 billion, and net farm income was nearly $6 billion. Ag exports in 2012 totaled nearly $7.3 billion.

Officials say every dollar in agricultural exports generates $1.29 in economic activities such as transportation, financing, warehousing and production. Nebraska's $7.3 billion in agricultural exports in 2012 translated into $9.4 billion in additional economic activity.

Nebraska's top five agricultural exports in 2012 were soybeans, corn, beef and veal, feeds and fodder, and grain products.

We produced all those products from fewer than 50,000 farms and ranches, averaging just over 900 acres in size, and averaging a net income per farm of $119,002.

Nebraska ranked second in ethanol production capacity in 2013, with 23 operating plants capable of pumping out 1.96 billion gallons of the fuel, 741 million gallons a day.

As Southwest Nebraskans are well aware, it takes water to produce all agricultural products, and we're blessed to sit atop the Ogallala Aquifer. If poured over the surface of the state, that water would have a depth of 37.9 feet. We're exploiting it with 95,170 registered, active irrigation wells, supplying water to more than 8.5 million acres of harvested cropland and pasture. In 2007, 46 percent of the harvested cropland was irrigated.

Money doesn't grow on trees? Perhaps not the cash itself, but Nebraskans are plenty blessed with the land, water and sunshine resources that agriculture turns into the vital products we all need.