Where do these numbers come from?

2022 Census of Agriculture

The Census of Agriculture counts every US farm and ranch every five years. It is the only NASS source with figures for every county, so all county maps, county rankings and county pages use it. The 2022 Census results were loaded into Quick Stats on February 13, 2024. The next Census covers 2027.

NASS annual estimates

Each year NASS estimates production for major crops, fruits, vegetables, nuts and livestock in the states that grow most of each one. Grown Where uses the latest final annual figure. In-season forecasts are left out, and so is any value for a season that hasn't ended. For most items that means 2025; wheat, barley, oats, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, cattle, sheep, maple syrup already have final 2026 figures.

Crop progress

Harvest timing (for example, when the corn harvest was half done) comes from NASS's weekly national crop progress reports. We use the most recent season with unbroken weekly reports, because reports were paused for part of some seasons.

Files

We download NASS's public Quick Stats bulk files (qs.census2022.txt.gz, qs.crops_20261106.txt.gz, qs.animals_products_20261106.txt.gz) and filter them locally. Data was last processed on 2026-11-06. The data is in the public domain. See NASS Quick Stats.

Annual estimates are newer, but for many fruits and vegetables NASS surveys only a few states, and its US figure is just the total of those states. So for each item we check how much of the 2022 Census total those surveyed states hold:

• If the surveyed states hold at least 85% of the Census total (or at least 70% including the Census's top three states), the answer uses the annual estimate. Otherwise it uses the 2022 Census, which covers every state.
• Surveys of one or two states are never used to name a top state.
• When NASS's US figure only adds up the surveyed states, and those states hold less than 97% of the Census total, we say “of the N states NASS surveyed” instead of “of the US.”
• A survey isn't used if a state whose figure is withheld could plausibly be No. 1.

By these rules, 49 of 88 items are answered from annual estimates and 39 from the 2022 Census. Each page labels its source and year beside the number.

Trend charts start in the first year NASS surveyed the same set of states it covers today, so the line never jumps because states were added or dropped.

NASS withholds some figures, marked “(D)” in its data, to avoid disclosing information about individual farms. Grown Where shows these as withheld to protect individual farms: hatched on maps and labeled in tables, never shown as zero or left blank.

Withheld figures affect rankings, so we check them. A withheld state or county can hold at most the total minus every published figure. When the leader is bigger than that remainder, we name it plainly. Otherwise we say “among states (or counties) with published figures,” and county ranks get an asterisk.

“(Z)” means less than half of the unit shown. We show it as “under 0.5” and shade it in the lowest color.

• NASS reports many vegetables in hundredweight (cwt, 100 pounds) and cranberries in barrels of 100 pounds. We convert both to pounds. That's a unit conversion, not an estimate.
• Census county maps use the measure NASS publishes for every county: production for field crops (bushels, pounds or tons), acres harvested for vegetables, bearing acres for orchards and berries, and head of animals (on farms on December 31, 2022, or sold during 2022 for broiler chickens).
• Farm sales are the market value of agricultural products sold in 2022, in nominal dollars.
• Citrus years are marketing seasons: “2025-26 season” is NASS's 2026 citrus year.

Every crop and every state has a page. A county gets its own page only if NASS publishes figures for at least 5 of the items on this site there. That covers 2,955 counties. Counties with less published data still appear in their state's county table and on maps, but don't get a page that would be mostly empty.

Maps use US Census Bureau county and state boundaries from the public-domain us-atlas files. Connecticut appears with its eight historical counties, which is how the 2022 Census of Agriculture reports it. The Census of Agriculture reports Alaska by its own census areas, so Alaska is shown at the state level only.

• Census of Agriculture: every five years. The 2027 Census will replace the 2022 county figures when NASS publishes it.
• Annual estimates: NASS finalizes most crops after harvest and the rest of its estimates on its own release calendar. We refresh from the bulk files after major releases and before each holiday page's season.

The full pipeline, and how to add a crop, is documented in the project's docs/data.md.

Grown Where is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, USDA or NASS. Sentences on the site are generated from templates filled with NASS values. Nothing is estimated or projected by us.