With cash receipts totaling $3.5 billion—$1.3 million from crops and $2.2 billion from livestock—Kentucky ranked 21st among the 50 states in farm marketings in 2001.
Kentucky tobacco, first marketed in New Orleans in 1787, quickly became the state's most important crop. Kentucky ranked 1st among tobacco-producing states until it gave way to North Carolina in 1929. Corn has long been one of the state's most important crops, not only for livestock feed but also as a major ingredient in the distilling of whiskey. Although hemp is no longer an important crop in Kentucky, its early significance to Kentucky farmers, as articulated in Congress by Henry Clay, was partly responsible for the establishment by the US of a protective tariff system. From 1849 to 1870, the state produced nearly all the hemp grown in the US.
In 2002 there were approximately 88,000 farms in Kentucky, with an average size of 154 acres (63 hectares). In 1990, almost half of Kentucky's population was considered rural, and nearly one fourth of the state's population owes its living to agriculture. In 2002 Kentucky farms produced some 226,430,000 lb of tobacco, the 2nd most in the nation. Leading field crops in 2002 included corn for grain, 106,000,000; soybeans, 40,950,000; wheat, 18,020,000; sorghum, 825,000; and barley, 512,000. Farmers also harvested 5,520,000 tons of hay, including 900,000 tons of alfalfa.