This week, like last year, the focus is on common Thanksgiving foods and which states produce them. The geographically accurate cartogram above redraws the states' sizes based on carrot production. Specifically the number of acres harvested. All 50 states produce the vegetable and of the 50, the USDA publishes complete data on only 45 of them due to the other five states either having few producers which would make it easy for their competitors to know how large their operations are or a very small number of acres harvested.
Findings
- Of the states data is available for, California harvests the most acres of carrots accounting for just under two-thirds of the nation's total acreage dedicated to the crop.
- While California is responsible for over 65% of acres dedicated to the crop in the country, Washington comes a distant second with just over 7%.
- Thirty-five states harvest less than 1,000 acres (in descending order): Minnesota, Georgia, Oregon, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maine, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Idaho, Alaska, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Montana, Illinois, Virginia, Connecticut, Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Indiana, Utah, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Dakota, Missouri, Nevada, Maryland, Louisiana, South Dakota, Kansas, and Alabama.
Caveats
- The agriculture census data is from 2012.
- The following states do produce carrots but the USDA does not release production numbers because there are few operators in the state. It could be that these states are the largest or the smallest producers in the US. The states whose data was not released are Delaware, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
- Arkansas and Wyoming had less than one-half of an acre dedicated to the crop so the USDA did not release their numbers.
- The choropleth classification is based on Jenks or natural breaks.
- The map is presented in an Albers equal-area conic projection.
- The two insets have the same scale as the main map.
Details
The Western states dedicate 79.92% of the total land dedicated to the crop. The Midwest comes in a distant second with 10.49% of all the land in the US dedicated to carrot production and is followed by the South at 7.11%. The Northeast only dedicates 2.48% of the total.
The total reported area dedicated to the crop in the United States is 99,186 acres or 154.98 square miles (about one-tenth the size of Rhode Island).
Data
| State | Acres Harvested | Percent of US Total |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 1 | 0.00 |
| Alaska | 46 | 0.05 |
| Arizona | 3,522 | 3.55 |
| California | 65,400 | 65.94 |
| Colorado | 1,630 | 1.64 |
| Connecticut | 13 | 0.01 |
| Florida | 2,208 | 2.23 |
| Georgia | 829 | 0.84 |
| Hawaii | 18 | 0.02 |
| Idaho | 61 | 0.06 |
| Illinois | 15 | 0.02 |
| Indiana | 6 | 0.01 |
| Iowa | 31 | 0.03 |
| Kansas | 1 | 0.00 |
| Kentucky | 5 | 0.01 |
| Louisiana | 3 | 0.00 |
| Maine | 89 | 0.09 |
| Maryland | 3 | 0.00 |
| Massachusetts | 75 | 0.08 |
| Michigan | 4,065 | 4.10 |
| Minnesota | 894 | 0.90 |
| Missouri | 4 | 0.00 |
| Montana | 17 | 0.02 |
| Nebraska | 6 | 0.01 |
| Nevada | 3 | 0.00 |
| New Hampshire | 24 | 0.02 |
| New Jersey | 615 | 0.62 |
| New York | 1,516 | 1.53 |
| North Carolina | 120 | 0.12 |
| North Dakota | 4 | 0.00 |
| Ohio | 1,068 | 1.08 |
| Oklahoma | 7 | 0.01 |
| Oregon | 823 | 0.83 |
| Pennsylvania | 77 | 0.08 |
| Rhode Island | 6 | 0.01 |
| South Carolina | 6 | 0.01 |
| South Dakota | 2 | 0.00 |
| Tennessee | 9 | 0.01 |
| Texas | 3,846 | 3.88 |
| Utah | 5 | 0.01 |
| Vermont | 42 | 0.04 |
| Virginia | 14 | 0.01 |
| Washington | 7,749 | 7.81 |
| West Virginia | 4 | 0.00 |
| Wisconsin | 4,304 | 4.34 |
Sources
United States Department of Agriculture. 2018. "USDA/NASS QuickStats Ad-Hoc Query Tool." Accessed November 18, 2018. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/D750D1B2-CA63-3BFD-9951-189EE5D1305C.