As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas, so it is no surprise the state is No. 1 in America as having the most family farms.
Missouri is No. 2, according to the Missouri Farm Bureau, with 99,000 family farms, many of them in rural Southeast Missouri.
But once harvested, what are the crops grown on Missouri's farmland used for?
Food is an obvious answer. However, a few other products may be surprising.
Sam Atwell, agronomist and rice specialist with the University of Missouri Dunklin County Extension Office, said domesticated crops are used for a variety of items, including feed, fiber, and various products and additives.
Atwell said locally grown crops, which predominantly are soybeans, corn, rice, grain sorghum or milo, and popcorn are used to make feed, oil and many other products.
"A lot of the plastics in your car are made from soybeans," Atwell said. "Even your dashboard has soybeans."
Atwell said soybeans are Butler County's biggest crop. They, along with corn, are used for everything from food, fuel and feed, to plastics, building and various chemical mixes.
"Soybeans are used for everything: cooking oils, heating oils, soy diesel. Generally, they are crushed into a liquid and used in that form," Atwell added.
Butler and Stoddard are the leading rice counties in the state, Atwell said, and Stoddard County is Missouri's No. 1 grain producer. Atwell said domestic rice is primarily grown for food, but also to make beer and the rice not used for beer is often taken to a miller. Rice mills prepare the grain for cooking.
"A lot of (locally grown rice) is hauled to Jonesboro (Ark.) to Anheuser-Busch for them to make beer out of," Atwell said.
Local popcorn is used for food, of course, and a large amount for the movies. Atwell said a vast amount of popcorn is grown in the Essex and Bernie, Missouri area and that Tanner Seeds is one of the largest popcorn growers in the world.
Atwell said many grain products grown in Southeast Missouri are chopped up and pelletized to create food for animals. A standard feed pellet contains a mixture of soybean, corn and alfalfa. Milo is used mostly for chicken and hog feed, and, like rice, for making alcohol.
"In China, a popular (drink) is whiskey made from grain sorghum," Atwell said. "But the milo they use is grown somewhere else."
Local wheat is used to make items such as feed, and for food, such as baking. Atwell said southern Missouri's farmland will produce a healthy wheat crop, but with prices consistently low, wheat production is left to farmers in Kansas whose land provides less freedom than the land in Southeast Missouri.
Atwell said farmland ranging from south Poplar Bluff through the Bootheel is more similar to land in New Orleans than to land somewhere as nearby as Fredericktown, Mo., or even the north side of Poplar Bluff.
"It's one thing we have to remind ourselves is that land-wise, we're not really part of Missouri," Atwell said. "We're more like Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee."
Atwell also noted a large supply of watermelons grown in Butler County are shipped all over the country. He said cotton was previously a popular local crop, but that it has since mostly been phased out and replaced with grain crops.