Where does Thanksgiving dinner come from? This week, the focus is on some staple Thanksgiving foods and which states produce them. The geographically accurate cartogram above redraws the states' sizes based on cranberry production. There are only a few states that produce the fruit according to the United States Agriculture Census.
Findings
- Only 13 states produce cranberries.
- Wisconsin and Massachusetts produce the vast majority of the fruit.
Caveats
- The agriculture census data is from 2012.
- Two states (Minnesota and Pennsylvania) do not show up on the map because their production is so small that they do not show up on the map.
- In addition, three states' (Connecticut, Michigan, and Rhode Island) production numbers are not reported by the USDA because it would be too easy to know how productive an individual farmer produced. It could be that these three states are the largest or the smallest producers or anything in between.
Details
Of the states that the USDA does report, two stand out as dedicating the most acreage to cranberry production: Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
There are also a handful of states that have a considerable number of acres dedicated to cranberry production but come nowhere near to the big two, these are: New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Maine. Finally, New York, Vermont, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania also grow cranberries but their production is extremely small.
Data
| State | Acres Devoted to Cranberry Production |
|---|---|
| Wisconsin | 19,377 |
| Massachusetts | 13,058 |
| New Jersey | 2,965 |
| Oregon | 2,822 |
| Washington | 1,671 |
| Maine | 209 |
| New York | 9 |
| Vermont | 5 |
| Minnesota | 1 |
| Pennsylvania | 1 |
| Connecticut | Not Reported |
| Michigan | Not Reported |
| Rhode Island | Not Reported |
Sources
United States Department of Agriculture. 2017. "USDA/NASS QuickStats Ad-Hoc Query Tool." Accessed November 19, 2017. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/?source_desc=CENSUS.