Your Thanksgiving table starts in a North Dakota field
by Dawn Smith-Pfeifer, editor On Your Table
Before you pass the dinner rolls this Thanksgiving, take a look at the table. A surprising amount of the food on that holiday table can be traced back to a field right here in North Dakota: the rolls, the pie crust, the oil in the stuffing and the honey glaze on the ham.
Harvest has hopefully wrapped up for most farmers around the state. For many farm and ranch families, Thanksgiving is the first real breather since spring. So, this #FarmingFriday, let's take a walk around the holiday table and meet the crops behind the feast.
The dinner rolls and pie crust. It all starts with wheat. In 2025, North Dakota was #1 in spring wheat production, the high-protein wheat bakers count on for good bread. In fact, our farmers raised 57.1% of the nation’s spring wheat supply last year. If you're making Esther’s easy homemade dinner rolls, there's a good chance North Dakota spring wheat is in that dough.
The mac and cheese. Pasta is made from durum wheat, and nobody grows more of it than our farmers. North Dakota led the nation in durum production in 2025, with 53.2 million bushels, accounting for 64.3% of the nation’s total.
The cooking oil. That oil for roasting vegetables or browning the stuffing may well be canola. North Dakota is the nation's top canola producer, and growers hit a record yield of 2,120 pounds per acre in 2025.
The honey glaze. Honey-glazed carrots, a sweet ham glaze, a drizzle over warm cornbread. North Dakota has been the nation's top honey producer for more than 20 years. (Canola and bees actually have a beautiful relationship. Watch the video on our What’s On Your Table page. )
The snack tray. Sunflower seeds sprinkled on a salad or set out for the football game probably came from here, too. North Dakota grew 1.1 billion pounds of sunflowers in 2025, more than any other state.
The leftovers chili. When the turkey's gone and someone makes a pot of chili or baked beans, think of North Dakota. We grew 42.2% of the nation's dry edible beans in 2025, ranking No. 1.
The sugar in the pie and the potatoes on the side. North Dakota is also an important producer of sugar beets (#3 in the nation) and potatoes (#5 in the nation), so even the sweet and the starchy parts of our meal have local roots.
The part that isn't on the grocery receipt
Here's something to chew on along with that second helping. As we shared a few weeks ago, farmers received just 5.8 cents of every dollar spent on domestically produced food in 2024. The rest goes to processing, transportation, retail and other costs.
So even a holiday table full of North Dakota-grown food leaves only a small slice of the bill with the families who raised it. And many of those families are working through a tough farm economy this year, with some in the red for the fifth year running.
From our farm to your table
This year, if you go around the table to share what you're thankful for, add one more to the list: the farmers and ranchers who grew it. Most of them will be sitting down to the same meal you are, just a little more tired.
Ever wondered how something on your plate got from the field to your fork? Ask a Farmer. We'd love to hear from you.