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 Brussels sprout production. Specifically the number of acres harvested. Only 32 states produce the vegetable and of the 32, the USDA publishes complete data on only 24 of them due to the other eight 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 Brussels sprouts accounting for over nine-tenths of the nation's total acreage dedicated to the crop.
- While California is responsible for over 96% of acres dedicated to the crop in the country, New York comes a very distant second with just under 1%.
- Ten states harvest less than 1,000 acres (in descending order): Indiana, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia.
Caveats
- The agriculture census data is from 2012.
- The following states do produce Brussels sprouts 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 Alaska, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
- Oklahoma's number of acres harvested was too low that the USDA did not release its numbers.
- The following states were not listed as Brussels sprouts producing states and thus do not show up on the map: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
- 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
Aside from California which essentially produces almost all the Brussels sprouts in the country, the Northeast and the Midwest are the only other regions that dedicate a significant amount of land to the vegetable's production.
The total reported area dedicated to the crop in the United States is 7,569 acres or 11.83 square miles (about one-half the size of Manhattan).
Data
| State | Acres Harvested | Percent of US Total |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | 0 | 0.00 |
| Arizona | 1 | 0.01 |
| California | 7,299 | 96.43 |
| Colorado | 1 | 0.01 |
| Connecticut | 5 | 0.07 |
| Georgia | 1 | 0.01 |
| Idaho | 0 | 0.00 |
| Illinois | 21 | 0.28 |
| Indiana | 2 | 0.03 |
| Iowa | 1 | 0.01 |
| Kentucky | 0 | 0.00 |
| Maine | 10 | 0.13 |
| Massachusetts | 11 | 0.15 |
| Michigan | 34 | 0.45 |
| Minnesota | 4 | 0.05 |
| Missouri | 0 | 0.00 |
| Montana | 0 | 0.00 |
| Nebraska | 1 | 0.01 |
| New Hampshire | 4 | 0.05 |
| New Jersey | 14 | 0.18 |
| New York | 75 | 0.99 |
| North Carolina | 1 | 0.01 |
| Ohio | 9 | 0.12 |
| Oklahoma | 0 | 0.00 |
| Oregon | 10 | 0.13 |
| Pennsylvania | 24 | 0.32 |
| Rhode Island | 0 | 0.00 |
| South Carolina | 0 | 0.00 |
| Vermont | 14 | 0.18 |
| Virginia | 1 | 0.01 |
| Washington | 2 | 0.03 |
| Wisconsin | 24 | 0.32 |
Sources
United States Department of Agriculture. 2018. "USDA/NASS QuickStats Ad-Hoc Query Tool." Accessed November 18, 2018. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/773A8C23-A18B-30C4-AB5E-7541095B9526.