The Crops of the World Garden is a living collection of more than 70 species curated by the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science, College of Agriculture and Life Science, Cornell University.
It is used primarily to help students in the course Field Crop Systems (PLSCS 2110) and other courses become familiar with the wide diversity of crops grown in New York and around the world for food, forage, fiber and biofuel in the field.
The garden displays emphasize grain, seed (oilseed and pulse), and forage crops. How do we select the most important crops? By acreage grown? By tonnage produced? These measures favor extensively grown crops, many of which have relatively low value per unit, as compared to high value crops which are grown on limited acreage.
To avoid this potential bias, the table below shows the ranking of major agronomic crops in New York, the United States, and the world according to their production value at the farm gate
(unprocessed, including products fed to on‐farm livestock). Despite their relatively low cost per unit weight, crops ranking high on this measure are also the ones grown on high acreages and producing high tonnage. However, hops is an example of a crop with small acreage but it ranks fairly high due to its high value per weight and the amount produced per acre.
Source: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1050 (accessed August 2014)
For reference, below are the top‐ranked fruits and vegetables. Note that the highest‐ranking fruit or vegetable crop, grapes, has a farm‐gate value about the same as potatoes in the USA. The highest ranking fruit or vegetable crop in NY state is apples ($251 million), which has a farm‐gate value below corn and hay ($968 and 806 million, respectively).
