Help Wanted in Tracking Down Historical Data on Grain Production and Processing

AppStaple's picture

I am working on putting together a coherent "context" section for presentations and grant proposals that tells the story of how we lost our localized staple food production (grains, beans, and oilseeds).

This kind of research is not my forte, so I hope that a lot of this info is already coalesced to some extent. I am looking for any information sources I can find that elucidate the
history of grain, pulse, and oilseed crop production and processing,
particularly the numbers and causes of the scale-up and centralization
trends of the last century (ie, the number of farms, number of mills,
number of varieties, average distance of transport, energy input vs
yields, consumer costs, availability, etc). While US national data is
probably the most versatile and therefore most vital, I would also like
to be able to include this information on a global scale, as well as to
look at Ohio and my region specifically, southeastern (Appalachian)
Ohio.
Do you know where or how I might access this data in a fairly coherent form?
Thank you much,
Brandon Jaeger

Groups audience: 

Group content visibility: 

Use group defaults

Attachments: 

 

Comments

Historic Grain Production Data

James Ramey's picture

Production data for some of the crops are available at www.nass.usda.gov.  Click on the State and County Data option under Quick Stats at the bottom of the page.  For Ohio you will find data for corn, soybeans, wheat and oats going as far back as 1918.  These are acreage and production data only.