World's Most Grown Crops

Try to name the world's 50 most grown crops based on total amount produced.

For the year 2019. Source: FAOSTAT.

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Last updated: March 12, 2021

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First submitted	May 27, 2014
Times taken	83,209
Average score	48.0%
Rating	4.57

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Tonnes	Crop
1949 m	Sugar cane
1148 m	Maize
766 m	Wheat
755 m	Rice
411 m	Palm oil fruit
370 m	Potato
334 m	Soybean
304 m	Cassava
278 m	Sugar beet
181 m	Tomato
159 m	Barley
117 m	Banana
100 m	Watermelon
100 m	Onion
91.8 m	Sweet potato
87.8 m	Cucumber
87.2 m	Apple

Tonnes	Crop
82.6 m	Cotton
78.7 m	Orange
77.1 m	Grape
74.3 m	Yam
70.5 m	Canola
70.2 m	Cabbage
62.5 m	Coconut
57.9 m	Sorghum
56.1 m	Sunflower seed
55.9 m	Mango
55.2 m	Eggplant
48.8 m	Peanut
44.8 m	Carrot / turnip
41.6 m	Plantain
38.0 m	Chili pepper
35.4 m	Tangerine
30.7 m	Garlic

Tonnes	Crop
30.1 m	Spinach
29.1 m	Lettuce
28.4 m	Millet
28.2 m	Pineapple
27.6 m	Melon
27.0 m	Green bean
26.9 m	Cauliflower / broccoli
25.7 m	Peach
23.9 m	Pear
23.1 m	Oat
22.9 m	Pumpkin
21.8 m	Pea
20.0 m	Lemon / lime
19.5 m	Olive
14.6 m	Rubber
14.2 m	Chick pea

+11

Level 43

May 29, 2014

cassava is also known as manioc and yuca

Level ∞

May 29, 2014

Those will work now too.

+12

Level 85

Jun 3, 2014

Could oil palm be accepted for palm oil? Carrots and turnips have nothing in common, I don't understand why they are grouped here... (carrots are apiaceae and turnips are brassicaceae).

Level ∞

Aug 14, 2016

Palm will work now

Level 66

Jan 19, 2019

Palm could also work for coconut, oil palm is more specific. If you accept the more general term, why not the more exact one as well?

Level 65

Jun 4, 2014

Palm should count for palm oil

Level 61

Aug 14, 2016

Agreed. I typed in "palm", didn't get it and moved on. None of the other vegetables that make oils are that specific (presumably because they're also used for things other than oil), so I wasn't expecting that one to be.

Level 65

Jun 5, 2014

I got rubber, but I missed grapes! Oh well.

Level 69

Jun 23, 2014

never in a million years would I have guessed "water buffalo milk"... who knew, right?

Level 35

Jun 13, 2016

So, cotton but not trees? I wonder where the line is drawn.

Level 84

Jan 15, 2020

yeah why not paper or lumber

Level ∞

Mar 12, 2021

Who knows?

Level 53

Jun 21, 2020

and apples, pears and oranges !

Level 77

Mar 19, 2021

Maybe because cotton is considered more 'croppy' than trees.

Level 20

Sep 15, 2016

Perhaps tapioca can be added for cassava..

Level 86

Dec 30, 2018

Considering how prevalent they are around Africa and Asia, I'm surprised that peanuts didn't make the list.

Level 28

Mar 19, 2021

Peanuts is on the list - near the bottom of the second column !

Level 55

Sep 24, 2021

Was recently updated, probably added peanuts and removed water buffalo milk.

Level 84

Dec 30, 2018

Kinda terrifying that even with all the alternative sweeteners like corn syrup used today, sugar cane is still the world's most produced crop, and it's not a close race.

+18

Level 70

Dec 31, 2018

That's really only true in the US, I believe. In Europe, Asia, and even Mexico, for instance, real sugar is still used in soft drinks – not HFCS. Plus there is a ton of plain ol' sugar in nearly all processed food no matter where you are, so I wonder if that doesn't account for a lot of it.

Level 75

Aug 21, 2020

I also think it is due to the measuring. For sugarcane, basically the whole plant is harvested, but the final product (refined sugar) only has a fraction of that weight. In case of apples for example, only the fruits are harvested, but now, the final product has the same weight.

Level 50

Sep 13, 2020

Why is it frightening? Isn't HFCS worse?

Level 73

Sep 22, 2020

No.

+12

Level ∞

Mar 12, 2021

@Froststar101 is correct.

Both HFCS and sugar are absolutely terrible for you. Consume sparingly or not at all, and for the love of all that is good, do not give it to your children.

And to take my rant up to the next level, we spent tens of trillions of dollars fighting Covid, but meanwhile the #1 cause of reduced life expectancy is added into pretty much every processed food product we buy. In terms of its health impact, sugar is like three Covid epidemics every year.

Just say no to added sugar.

Level 67

Mar 12, 2021

Quizmaster, this is a very political comment and I for one am offended. While I think you are mostly correct (except that sugar isn't the #1 cause of reduced life expectancy), this is very clearly a matter of politics and not science. At least you didn't mention f*** m***s when you brought up Covid, that would have made my head explode with partisan rage.

Level 86

Mar 13, 2021

What are you on about?? The list of chronic diseases either caused or exacerbated by excess sugar is massive, and in the US at least, nearly all mass produced food has added sugar or HFCS. Not sure what is political about that?

Level 71

Mar 17, 2021

I think jetpunkers should not start to push their own agendas on this site. There are other web-sites that you can join to complain about the world problems.

Level 77

Mar 19, 2021

Is f*** m***s meant to mean 'fake masks'?

Level 71

Mar 19, 2021

I think Quizmaster is right and I don't think the comment was meant to be political, but it's simplistic. If you live in a developed country, or as a middle class/rich person in many developing countries, processed food is pretty much impossible to avoid. It's probably next to impossible for someone to cut out *all* the added sugar they consume on a daily basis, just because of a lack of options. It's something that can only really change if the government/food industry takes action, and I doubt that's anything that will happen soon.

Level 67

Apr 30, 2021

Quizmaster deleted a criticism I made of his questionable claims regarding vitamin D in connection to this pandemic because apparently it was too political, as I alluded to the thing Jack mentioned. I never mentioned government action, but apparently this is a controversial issue in the United States so it should never be mentioned. And now QM is criticising an actual government spending policy (inherently political) in a comparison that in my view is flawed, but I'm unsure what response I could make to this that would be apolitical by his standards. I wouldn't mind a rule against political comments if it could be applied fairly and came with a commitment from the site to cover political or political-adjacent topics only in an unbiased way, but neither of these seems to be happening.

Level 74

Aug 23, 2021

They are both bad for you when consumed in excess...It is definitely a "first world problem" though as in developing countries something else (war, famine, pathogens etc)has a higher probability of getting you first

Level 55

Dec 30, 2018

I started with this quiz but I immediately remembered I barely know any of the answers in English, oh well...

Update: I forgot about a lot of fruits and vegetables as well lol, gotta go to sleep I guess

+12

Level 69

Dec 30, 2018

No sweet pepper, no lemons, no mushrooms, no coffee, no tea, no cacao?! o0

Level 56

Jan 19, 2019

I'm guessing for tea & cacao the final product is more concentrated so the production tonnage is lower than for a lot of fruits.

Level 59

Nov 20, 2019

tea, coffee and cocoa seemed total shoe ins. What happened to them, over cucumbers and pears?

Level 51

Sep 15, 2020

I think it's measured by weight of the raw crop

Level 71

Mar 19, 2021

^Same. Also surprised at the lack of tobacco. I think the fact that those things are smaller/less massive individually could also be a factor. 1,000 cucumbers weighs a lot more than 1,000 tea leaves.

Level 54

Jan 21, 2023

Yes I wonder. Although speaking for myself, I'm sure I get through a greater weight of coffee bean per week than I do of many of the things on this list. Perhaps it's just me.

Level 58

Mar 20, 2021

Yep. I tried coffee, tea and tobacco and was surprised they were not on the list.

Level 81

Jan 3, 2019

Perhaps accept "oilseed rape" for rapeseed/canola? That is name I've heard most often in the UK.

Level 71

Jan 3, 2019

Seconded

Level 71

Mar 20, 2021

Two years on, still not allowed.

As a matter of interest QM, why is tobacco not on the list? Is it the same as Tea/coffee and excluded because of the processing?

Level 45

Jan 16, 2019

I agree ! (otherwise I'll just blame it on google translate)

Level 76

Jan 20, 2019

Canola (Canadian oil) is a newer, improved type of rapeseed oil which had some of the bad things in rapeseed bred out of it. I remember when it first came out in the '70s it was touted as the newest, greatest "health" food. So would the two really be the same thing? Perhaps it's labeled differently across the pond.

Level 59

Nov 20, 2019

UK has no canola. We do have rapeseed oil though, in varying degrees of artisanness.

Our countryside is strewn with yellow fields when the rape flowers.

Level 73

Mar 19, 2021

Fun fact, Canola is named as such because it was developed in a Canadian university. It is basically a shortened version of Canada oil.

Level 75

Jan 6, 2019

Always fun to see this quiz updated with the new year! In line with accepting palm, soy, chili and sunflower, please accept sugar sans cane.

Level 52

Apr 8, 2020

Please?

Level 53

Jun 21, 2020

I would say no. There are several sugar crops- cane, beet and to an extent corn are grown for that and many others on the list are good sources of it.

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

I would parry thusly: while there are other crops grown for sugar, like beets, sugar cane is the most iconic, and the one most people think of when they think of a crop grown for sugar. I'm still holding out hope that sugar will be accepted for sugar cane one of these years :)

Level 73

Nov 23, 2021

Yeah I agree with the above commenter that sugar is a product rather than a crop; the crop is sugarcane or sugar beet.

Level 48

Jan 12, 2019

I'm very surprised that coffee, cocoa, peanuts and tobacco are not on this list.

Level 73

Oct 24, 2020

Same. But then I remembered that it's by weight, and that would explain tea and tobacco for sure. As for the others, they are still either not that heavy or their production not high enough to make the list. Cocoa is heavy but depends on whether they measure the whole fruit or just the seeds, which is more likely.

Level 44

Jan 15, 2019

Nice! Surprised that coffee, tea and cocoa aren’t on here though, thought they’d be more prevalent :O

Level 84

Jan 15, 2019

I think a lot of these fruits show up over coffee beans because they do this by weight and fruits naturally are full of water. Coffee beans by themselves aren't that heavy but if you calculated the weight of all the coffee produced from them it would be a lot more.

Level 60

Jan 17, 2019

No avocado or kale??? LOL

Level 48

Jan 19, 2019

How is coffee, cacao, tea, and cola not on here? Also tobacco, opium, marijuana, and hops...

Level 45

Jan 19, 2019

How about allowing sugar for sugar cane?

Level 40

Jan 29, 2019

no, because sugarbeats exist

Level 67

Jan 19, 2019

Could potato be accepted for sweet potato?

Level 71

Mar 9, 2019

Like York and New York are the same place.

Level 66

Jun 5, 2019

sweet potato would be a yam if I am not mistaken

Level 59

Nov 20, 2019

You are mistaken.

Level 76

Mar 12, 2021

Not quite so simple. Sweet Potato and Yam are botanically different, but often used interchangeably linguistically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato

Level 67

Jan 19, 2019

How could I have missed garlic and onion?

I got several of the others by remembering what the most common food allergies are to.

I was surprised not to see cacao, coffee or smokable plants

Level 66

Jan 19, 2019

If cauliflower and cabbage are lumped together, you could also add cabbage to the group, and a few that don't make the list on their own (e.g. kale and Brussels sprouts). They're different cultivar groups of the same species, Brassica oleracea. Turnip is actually a variant of a closely related species, Brassica rapa, while carrots are from the Apiaceae family, a completely different branch of the higher plants, so it makes no sense to lump carrots and turnip together as a single answer.

Level 58

Jan 19, 2019

I think there is an error in peanuts not being on the list.

Level 18

Mar 22, 2021

Its weight

Level 70

Jan 20, 2019

Jesus, slicing it a little thin with the yam/sweet potato and orange/tangerine distinctions, huh?

Level 70

Jan 20, 2019

Like, especially considering you lump together broccoli and cauliflower. Are orange and tangerine really more differentiated than cauliflower and broccoli?

Level 76

Jan 20, 2019

I understand yam and sweet potato. They are two completely different things, but carrot and turnip are also different. Sorghum and millet are much more closely related than those two, and I find it difficult to believe there are more green beans raised than dried beans such as pinto, black, navy, etc.

Level 66

Jan 20, 2019

Isn't yam a variety of sweet potato? Surprised the commentators haven't already been feuding over this.

Level 76

Jan 20, 2019

My grandmother used to grow a sweet potato variety called Yellow Yam so you are correct that there are varieties of sweet potato called yam, but no matter what we call them, in reality as I stated previously, they are two different plants. I've never seen a true yam in US grocery stores.

Level 65

Jan 20, 2019

Yams are a West African vegetable. Due to slavery, the New World vegetable, sweet potato, was given the moniker 'yam' because it was the closest thing the enslaved West Africans saw to their former staple crop.

Level 75

Aug 21, 2020

Just see wiki.

Level 47

Jan 20, 2019

Two things I see missing:

Grapefruit, which i belive is around 85 mtons, and Coffee Plants

Level 66

Jun 5, 2019

Millet? Sorghum? Never heard of it. Gonna look them up now.

Level 66

Jun 5, 2019

Ah, turns out I did think of millet in my own language. I was allready thinking, I dont know all the english names for the grains, or at least couldnt come up with all. And this one I was pretty sure I didnt know the english term for. (Also thought of the dutch name for barley, which is very similar as the one for millet. Gerst and gierst)

Level 84

Nov 14, 2019

So apparently money really doesn't grow on trees. :-(

Level 87

Mar 16, 2021

There was no cash cow on the domesticated animals quiz either.

Level 51

Jan 15, 2020

Thought vanilla, cocoa, peanut, tobacco, coffee, cherry, rasberry, and blackberry would be here

Level 75

Aug 21, 2020

Not much vanilla is necessary to flavor a food (the reason there are no spices in this quiz). And most vanilla flavor is artificial, because real vanilla is pretty expensive.

Level 54

Jan 20, 2023

Or Marijuana

Level 43

Jan 16, 2020

Three that are definitely missed - Peanut, Hemp and Poppy

Level 50

Apr 3, 2020

what about coffee??

Coffee should definitely be in there

Level 81

Mar 12, 2021

It's by weight, not value

Level 65

Aug 13, 2020

What is a melon? There are different types of melons, sure, like watermelons, rockmelons and honeydews, but melon....?

Level 75

Aug 21, 2020

I think Cucumis melo or 'musk melon', a species which contains cantaloupes and honeydews (among others), but not watermelons, for example.

Level 70

Mar 17, 2021

Could this answer at least accept "cantaloupe" or "honeydew" as type-ins? I got watermelon and then tried cantaloupe, and when it wasn't accepted, I assumed there must be no more melons on the list.

Level 75

Sep 11, 2020

This source must have been really weird. It groups together carrots and turnips, but not bananas and plantains? Sure, they're different species, but they are in the same Genus. Meanwhile, carrots and turnips aren't even in the same family.

Level 76

Mar 12, 2021

Agree. After I typed "Melon" and it got accepted, I didn't think that "Watermelon" would be a separate category!

Level 73

Oct 24, 2020

When you remember to type Plantains, Sorghum and Cassava, but forget Onions and Garlic, that's when you know you've spent too much time on Jetpunk.

Level 70

Oct 25, 2020

Rare to see a quiz where the top-ranked, upper-left-corner, most common item, has a <50% guess rate.

Level 78

Mar 14, 2021

All the other quizzers who didn't get it tried "sugar" but it wasn't accepted. I think they're sending a message to the quiz maker :)

Level 83

Mar 12, 2021

The Beatles misled me with all that "Strawberry Fields Forever" talk.

Level 66

Mar 13, 2021

Why are carrot and turnip grouped together? They are two very differnt things.

Level 57

Mar 13, 2021

The data was most likely collected that way.

Level 54

Mar 13, 2021

Why can't simply "sugar" be accepted for sugar cane?

Level 78

Mar 17, 2021

Because the quiz maker decided that sugar beet and sugar cane needed to be separate entries. Despite several other pairings of certain crops.

Level 75

Mar 19, 2021

It's FAOSTAT that came up with the distinctions/pairings, not the quizmaker

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

@PeregrineFalcon However tis not the same issue as accepting a type-in, so for example accepting "sugar" for sugarcane.

Level 71

Mar 17, 2021

The thought of 26 million Tonnes of Broccoli ........... yuuuuuk

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

Haha. It's lovely very lightly steamed with melted butter or a drizzle of olive oil, freshly ground pepper, salt and a splash of fresh lemon juice. Promise.

Level 73

Nov 23, 2021

It's good plain

Level 86

Jan 20, 2023

It's great roasted with a little olive oil & seasoning, too!

Level 52

Jan 20, 2023

You misspelled "yum"

Level 72

Mar 17, 2021

Amazed that we grow more pears (on the list) than papayas (not on the list). That doesn't conform with my worldwide experience at all.

Level 75

Mar 19, 2021

China produces a lot of pears, 2/3 of the total

Level 61

Mar 19, 2021

In my neck of the woods Chinese pears are called Chinese apple. If that's common I would think a lot of people wouldn't guess pears for this quiz.

Level 47

Mar 19, 2021

coffee? cocoa? tea?

Level 49

Mar 19, 2021

Interesting Facts #229

In South Korea, it is a common belief that people can die if they sleep in a closed room with an electric fan running.

Have you ever slept in a closed room with an electric fan running?

Level 66

Mar 19, 2021

Yes, but not in South Korea.

Level 55

Mar 19, 2021

please accept sugar for sugar cane

Level 57

Mar 19, 2021

for some reason upon starting this quiz I forgot about the existence of all fruits and vegetables

Level 35

Mar 20, 2021

Forgot maize exists which tells me it’s time for bed

Level 61

Mar 20, 2021

Really surprised that lentils aren't on the list - seems like the weight argument shouldn't really apply.

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

Yes, I was surprised by this as well!

Level 74

Jan 24, 2023

I think they must have used a bunch of very narrow categories for different kinds of dry legume, otherwise I'd really expect them to be here.

Level 71

Mar 22, 2021

sweet potato and yam aren't the same?

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

Different vegetables entirely, though as others have pointed out in North America people colloquially refer to an orange variety of the sweet potato as a yam.

Level 75

Mar 23, 2021

Any chance you can accept mandarin for tangerine? Tangerines are a type of mandarin.

Level 60

Jan 20, 2023

I typed mandarin but it didn't work

Level 53

Apr 3, 2021

I'm surprised no tobacco, coffee, tea, or strawberry (or any other berries).

Also, why are melons and watermelons separate? I guessed melon and didn't think to also write watermelon since it was already encapsulated by "melon"

Level 49

Jun 4, 2021

How did I forget wheat, haha

Level 69

Jul 11, 2021

What about "hay"?

Level 33

Jul 22, 2021

Tobacco? coffee ? tea ?

Level 62

Sep 24, 2021

The question is poorly phrased. What does 'amount' mean? If it means weight, then say so. Likewise if it means cubic metres, in which case I'm sure tea would figure, and lentils

Level 68

Jan 20, 2023

Units in tonnes are given for each item, so it's not really ambiguous.

Level 73

Nov 23, 2021

I'm surprised there's not more beans on here. I'm curious what the statistics are for certain other crops like tea, coffee, cacao, tobacco, khat, and coca. Also I really wonder if lumber is actually a crop, because it meets the definition of a crop as "a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence."

Level 55

Feb 7, 2022

who calls corn maize?

Level 67

Feb 19, 2022

It's the scientific name and the umbrella term for most corn types. I believe in French they still call it mais (with a trema or two dots over the i) (pronounced May-ees)

Level 54

Jan 21, 2023

"Corn" only really means maize if you live in North America, I think (as does the Collins Dictionary). In Britain the proper terms are maize when it's growing in the field and sweetcorn when it's on your plate - except for corn on the cob, confusingly. That said, quite a lot of people do follow the American usage.

Level 68

Mar 17, 2022

I'm surprised wood or lumber didn't make the list. It's not a food but neither is rubber so the food aspect of crop is not in play. The USA by itself uses more than 100 million tons each year.

Level 50

May 9, 2022

You must accept «batat(a)»…

Level 50

Oct 11, 2022

Latex should be accepted for rubber

Level 51

Dec 14, 2022

Pls accept yam for sweet potato

Level 60

Jan 20, 2023

please accept Kumara for sweet potato.

Level 86

Jan 20, 2023

Quizmaster, is it possible to post a link to the source? I'm curious about the rankings and the methodology, but I wasn't able to find the info when I did a brief search on FAOSTAT.

Level 56

Jan 20, 2023

Carrot and turnip are grouped together but melon and watermelon are two different things?

It seems a little bit random to me, what is grouped together and what not...

Level 20

Jan 21, 2023

Did anyone else try marijuana 😂

Level 45

Jan 22, 2023

yes!!

Level 74

Jan 24, 2023

Not a complaint about the quiz, but about the source- alfalfa absolutely belongs here. I couldn't find 2019 data specifically, but nearby years were in the 200 million ton range, which clearly qualifies for the list.

I could sort of understand if this was only counting crops for "human consumption", but the significant majority of corn grown is used for animal feed (or biofuel), same as alfalfa. I just can't see a reason why it wouldn't be on the list.

Level 86

Jan 27, 2023

Cauliflower and Broccoli are two completely different vegetables with completely different flavours. If they are combines, I think oranges and tangerines should also be put together into 1 category

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