floriculture

Did you know about 22% of Americans bought flowers last Valentine’s Day, according to industry statistics? That single-day surge added about $2.3 billion to the U.S. economy.

April showers bring May flowers and for USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), this means the release of 2021 floriculture data. Look for more flora in this data bouquet; NASS expanded the floriculture program to cover all 50 states and more than 30 new crops.

Florida’s recognized signature crop is citrus. The 2017 Census of Agriculture shows 502,886 acres in orchards (known as groves in Florida), second only to California. The bulk of Florida’s orchard acreage includes citrus. Florida had 474,540 total citrus acres – 57 percent of the national total...

It might not be the Giants’ year in baseball, but in U.S. agriculture, California is clearly the MVP in sales. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, California’s 70,527 farmers ranked No. 1 in agricultural sales with $45.2 billion; this accounted for nearly 12 percent of the U.S. total and...

Happy Poinsettia Day! Of the countless iconic holiday season images in American homes, perhaps the most popular and colorful of them started off as a humble bush from our neighbors to the south. The poinsettia was introduced to this country in the late 1820s by Joel Poinsett, the first American...