Agriculture is a major industry in the United States and the country is a net exporter of food.

History of agriculture in the USA
The top twenty agricultural products of the United States by value as reported by the FAO in 2003 (ranked in order of value with mass in metric tons):
The only other crops to ever appear in the top twenty in the last 40 years were, commonly, tobacco, barley, and oats, and, rarely, peanuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds (in all, only 26 of the 188 crops the FAO tracks worldwide). Alfalfa and hay would both be in the top ten in 2003 if they were tracked by FAO.

Crops
The major field crops with the value of production are:


Note alfalfa and hay are not tracked by the FAO and the production of tobacco in the U.S. has fallen 60% between 1997 and 2003.

Value of production
U.S. agriculture has a high yield relative to other countries. The yield was (in 2004):[2]

Corn for grain, average of 160.4 bushels harvested per acre (10.07 t/ha)
Soybean for beans, average of 42.5 bushels harvested per acre (2.86 t/ha)
Wheat, average of 43.2 bushels harvested per acre (2.91 t/ha, was 44.2 bu/ac or 2.97 t/ha in 2003) Yield
The major livestock industries in the United States are:
Inventories in the United States at the end of 1997 were:
Goats, horses, turkeys and bees are also raised, though in lesser quantities. Inventory data is not as readily available as for the major industries. For the three major goat-producing states (AZ, NM, and TX) there were 1,200,000 goats at the end of 2002. There were 5,300,000 horses in the United States at the end of 1998. There were 2,500,000 colonies of bees at the end of 2002.

Dairy Cattle
Beef Cattle
Swine (also called hogs or pigs)
Poultry
Sheep
403,000,000 chickens
99,500,000 cattle
59,900,000 hogs
7,600,000 sheep Farm Type or Majority Enterprise Type
Agriculture is both a federal and a local responsibility with the United States Department of Agriculture being the federal department responsible. Agriculture is an extremely powerful interest group in American politics and has been since the founding of the USA. Government aid includes research into crop types and regional suitability as well as many kinds of subsidies, some price supports and loan programs. U.S. farmers are not subject to production quotas and some laws are different for farms compared to other workplaces.
Labor laws prohibiting children in other workplaces provide some exemptions for children working on farms with complete exemptions for children working on their family's farm. Children can also gain permits from vocational training schools or the 4-H club which allow them to do jobs they would otherwise not be permitted to do.
A large part of the U.S. farm workforce is made up of migrant and seasonal workers, many of them recent immigrants from Latin America or aliens working under work permits. Additional laws apply to these workers and their housing which is often provided by the farmer.