Iowa’s soil is especially fertile and ideal for growing crops.
The state has more than 100,000 farms, making it third in number of farms behind Texas and Missouri.
Farmland occupies all but 8 percent of the land in Iowa; the only state with a higher percentage of farmland is Nebraska. One of 10 people in Iowa lives on a farm.
Chances are one in four that the bacon you had for breakfast came from a hog raised in Iowa; the state produces almost three times as many hogs each year as the number two hog-producing state, Illinois.
Iowa grows more corn than any other state, about a fifth of all the corn in the United States.
Iowa farmers often ship their grain to market via barges on the Mississippi River and less frequently on the Missouri River.
Iowa is the only state to be bordered by two large navigable rivers.
