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There are approximately 27,000 cattle farms raising beef in Kansas. Not only does Kansas have the third largest number of cattle on ranches and feedyards at 6.35 million on Jan. 1, 2019, the state also has a significant footprint in the cattle processing sector. Texas owns the most cattle in the United States followed by Nebraska and Kansas. Texas accounts for roughly 13 percent of the cattle inventory in the United States. Agriculture remains the largest economic and industrial driver in Kansas, generating more than $70 billion into the state’s economy. The state remains in the top 10 for beef cattle, corn, hay, hogs, soybean, sunflower, sorghum and wheat. Meatpacking and dairy industries are major economic activities, and the Kansas City stockyards are among the nation’s largest. Food processing is ranked as the states third largest industry in the 1990’s. The two leading industries are the manufacture of transportation equipment and industrial and computer machinery. In 2020, Kansas generated around $17.4 billon in agricultural cash receipts with the highest valued commodities being cattle and calves, corn, and soybeans. That same year, the value of Kansas’s agricultural production and processing industries represented 6.8 percent of total state GDP.

Right: Bill Thomas pulls an International binder ridden by Dale Wright as the two bind wheat for the Jewell County Historical Society’s Threshing Bee, just west of Mankato in a field owned by Fred Eilert. The Jewell County Antique Farm Machinery and Threshing Bee will take place on July 16-17 at the Mankato City Park off Highway 36.

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, it was somewhat of a scene from the past as 13 workers came together on Fred Eilert’ s wheat field just west of Mankato. The group ranged in age from 14-year-old Noah Shipman to 84-year-old Harlow Vader. Their mission was to bind wheat for the upcoming Jewell County Historical Society’ s Threshing Bee. The t-shirts and tank tops were not authentic to the past but the machinery was true to a time decades ago.