Comment by NeutralCrane
11 hours ago
California leads in the value of goods sold, because it produces a lot of relatively expensive agricultural products like almonds, avocados, tomatoes, etc. Additionally, it’s a larger state, so it naturally will inflate the totals. If you look at food staples, and at the amount produced by square mile, the Midwest is definitely the main food producer of the US.
A 1 square mile state that produced nothing but wheat would beat any other state in terms of “amount of staples produced per square mile,” but it wouldn’t be able to sustain a population. That’s not a useful metric.