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News Release

Last modified: Monday, November 22, 2010

Thanksgiving in Indiana in 2010: A menu of fun facts and figures

Some statistics from the Indiana Business Research Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 22, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Just in time for Thanksgiving Day next Thursday (Nov. 25), the Indiana Business Research Center in Indiana University's Kelley School of Business has offered a menu of interesting statistics.

The Main Course -- Turkey:

• The average cost of the traditional Thanksgiving feast for 10 people this year is $43.47. This includes a menu of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a relish tray of carrots and celery, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and beverages of coffee and milk.
• This year 242 million turkeys are expected to be raised in the United States. That's down 2 percent from the number raised in 2009. Turkey production in 2009 weighed 7.1 billion pounds and was valued at $3.6 billion.
• Indiana ranks fifth in the nation for number of turkeys expected to be produced in 2010. Indiana is responsible for around 7 percent of total U.S. production.
• Seventy-five percent of all turkey production comes from six states. The top six turkey producing states are: Minnesota (47 million), followed by North Carolina (31.0 million), Arkansas (28.0 million), Missouri (17.5 million), Indiana (16.0 million) and Virginia (15.5 million).
• The value of all turkeys raised in Indiana in 2009 was $271.5 million. Indiana ranked fifth in value of turkeys raised, following Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri and Arkansas.
• There were 498 Indiana farms with turkeys in 2007. Dubois County leads the state in turkey inventory (followed by Daviess County) and is one of the top 10 turkey-producing counties in the nation.
• Average market weight of a female hen that is purchased at the store for Thanksgiving is 15.3 pounds. The male turkey, a tom, typically weigh 33 pounds at market and is used for cutlets, tenderloins, turkey sausage, turkey franks and turkey deli meats.
• Eighty-eight percent of all Americans eat turkey at Thanksgiving. Roughly 736 million pounds of turkey was consumed in the U.S. during Thanksgiving in 2009.
• Turkeys sold to grocery stores and other retail outlets account for 41.1 percent of all the birds produced. Turkey also is sold as a commodity (27.9 percent), to food service outlets (17.7 percent) and exported (6.4 percent).

Side Dishes and Desserts:

• Indiana's 2009 production of snap, or green, beans for processing (as opposed to sold fresh) weighed 15,650 tons. Last year's crop was a 19.5 percent increase over the 2008 crop. Indiana's 2009 production accounted for 1.9 percent of the nation's total and ranked Indiana eighth among states.
• Surprisingly Indiana's share of U.S. fresh sweet corn production was just 1.5 percent with an output of 421,000 hundredweight in 2009, which was a 13.8 percent increase over 2008. (Note that a hundredweight is equal to 100 pounds.)
• Indiana's 2009 production of cucumbers was valued at $3.5 million. Indiana's production weighed 9,620 tons and made up 1.8 percent of the nation's total production for processing. Indiana ranked eighth among states.
• Value of Indiana's tomato crop for processing in 2009 was $36.3 million, from the production of 321,340 tons of tomatoes. Indiana ranks second in the production of tomatoes for processing and comprises 2.3 percent of the U.S. tomatoes for processing crop.
• There were 13.8 million bushels of wheat produced in Indiana in 2010. Indiana's production is less than 1 percent of the nation's production of wheat (2.2 billion) whereas Kansas and North Dakota account for 33 percent of the nation's supply.
• There were 6.46 billion eggs Indiana produced from December 2008 through November 2009. Indiana's egg production made up 7.1 percent of the U.S. total and ranks fourth in the nation.
• Indiana produced 30 million pounds of apples, versus 5.5 billion pounds in Washington in 2009. Indiana's apple crop comprises 3 percent of U.S. production.
• There were 3.7 million pounds of another popular dessert fruit, blueberries, produced in Indiana in 2009. Nationally, 364.1 million pounds of blueberries were produced.

Giving Thanks:

• On average 1.5 million Hoosiers volunteered in the state Indiana between 2007 and 2009, or about 29.9 percent of all residents. Indiana volunteers contributed 206.1 million hours of service each year, or 42 volunteer hours per resident. Nationally 26.5 percent of Americans volunteered (62.0 million) over this period, contributing 8.1 billion hours of service in communities across the country.
• The amount of service contributed each year in volunteer hours in Indiana is valued at $4.3 billion. In Indianapolis $1.1 billion of service was contributed by 394,500 volunteers.
• Nearly one-fourth, or 24.9 percent, of Indiana volunteers engage in fundraising -- the most popular activity. The remaining top three volunteer activities are collecting and distributing food (22.3 percent), general labor (19.4 percent) and tutoring or teaching (18.6 percent).
• There were about 25,510 farmers in Indiana in 2007. Including other agriculture-related occupations, 4.2 percent of Indiana's workforce is devoted to agriculture.

Fun Facts:

• Only tom turkeys (male) gobble. Hen turkeys (female) make clicking noises.
• Domesticated turkeys cannot fly.
• Turkeys have 3,500 feathers at maturity.

The Indiana Business Research Center is part of a national network of State Data Centers and acts as the official state representative to the Census Bureau on matters relating to the census and population estimates. The IBRC also develops and maintains STATS Indiana, the award winning, state-supported Web service (www.stats.indiana.edu).

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