Idaho Agriculture by the Numbers: Crops, Production, National Rank, and Irrigated Acres

Reading Idaho agriculture figures: a figure without a date is not a fact

Agriculture numbers circulate in Idaho policy debate with no year attached, and a figure without one can be several revisions old or a forecast of a crop still in the field. This page is the current set, each figure carrying the year it describes and the date USDA published it, with Idaho's rank computed across every reporting state from the same series rather than repeated from someone else's summary.

All of it comes from the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the USDA agency that runs the surveys and the Census of Agriculture. Anyone can reproduce these numbers in Quick Stats.

What crops are grown in Idaho, ranked by value

Potatoes, wheat and alfalfa hay are Idaho's three largest crops by value, and each was worth more than half a billion dollars in 2025. Potatoes alone were worth more than wheat and alfalfa hay together. These are Idaho's crops by value of production, the figure NASS publishes for each crop at the price growers received.

The sugarbeet value is for 2024, the latest year NASS has published; its 2025 production and acreage are in the same row. Winter wheat was $363.5 million of the wheat total and spring wheat $187.0 million. Corn for silage covered 280,000 Idaho acres and yielded 8,680,000 tons in 2025, and NASS publishes no value of production for it.

Ranked by acreage instead, the order changes. Wheat and alfalfa hay cover 1,140,000 and 870,000 acres and return about $483 and $631 an acre. Potatoes cover 314,500 acres and return about $3,605 an acre. Hops and dry onions return more per acre than any crop in the table, about $12,317 and $14,761, on 5,102 and 11,900 acres.

No Idaho crop is worth as much as Idaho milk, which was valued at $3.83 billion in 2025.

Where Idaho leads United States agriculture

Idaho's potato crop is a third of the national crop by weight and a quarter of it by value, which works out to $8.10 a hundredweight against a national average of $10.81. Idaho's crop goes predominantly to processing and storage rather than to the fresh market, and the two channels price differently.

Idaho livestock and milk production

The gap between third in milk cows and twenty-second in beef cows is the shape of Idaho's livestock sector in two rows. Of the 2.5 million head counted on January 1, 2026, 725,000 were milk cows and another 310,000 were milk replacement heifers, so the dairy side alone is about 41 percent of the state's cattle. Beef cows were 435,000 and cattle on feed 355,000.

NASS publishes some of these series for only the states where the sector is material, which is why the denominators differ. A rank is stated here against the number of states NASS actually reports, not against fifty.

Idaho irrigation and the water line

These are the irrigation series, and each carries the year it describes.

Only California, Nebraska, Arkansas and Texas irrigate more ground than Idaho, and the 2022 Census of Agriculture puts the dependence in sharper terms: 2.9 million of Idaho's 4.37 million acres of harvested cropland were irrigated, about two thirds of the total.

Because that ratio is two thirds, water administration reaches most of Idaho's harvested cropland. A curtailment order, a mitigation plan, or a change to the Water Appropriation Rules reaches two thirds of the cropland that produces the figures in the tables above.

Irrigated acreage has also been drifting down: 3.40 million acres in the 2017 census, 3.17 million in 2022, 3.18 million in the 2023 survey.

Idaho farms and farmland

Idaho has 1.2 percent of the country's farms on 1.3 percent of its farmland, and produces a third of its potatoes and 8 percent of its milk. The output share is about 28 times the farm-count share in potatoes and about 7 times it in milk.

How to read a USDA NASS figure on Idaho before you quote it

Three traps, all avoidable.

A crop year is published before it is finished. Quick Stats carries an in-progress crop under the plain annual label as well as under "August forecast", with the same value and the same load date. In August 2026 the 2026 barley row reads 52,890,000 bushels, and it is a forecast of a crop still standing. The finished 2025 number is 54,880,000. If a figure for the current calendar year appears before harvest, check whether a forecast row shares its publication date.

The reference period is part of the series. Cattle are counted on one day, January 1, and milk is summed over a year. "Idaho had 2.5 million cattle in 2026" means on January 1.

Census and survey are different programs. Farm counts and land in farms come from an annual survey; irrigation, cropland, and operator detail come from the Census of Agriculture every five years, and from the Irrigation and Water Management Survey the year after each census. The 2023 irrigation figures above are survey figures published in October 2024, not census figures.

What to watch in Idaho agriculture data

The January cattle inventory report and the annual crop production summary in January set most of these numbers for the year. Potato and hay estimates are revised through the winter.

The next Census of Agriculture covers 2027 and will restate irrigated acreage, which is the series that matters for water policy and the one that moves slowest.