Which country is the largest producer of cereal grains?
Midwestern United States
Wheat is produced throughout the Midwest and is the principal cereal grain in the country. The U.S. is ranked third in production volume of wheat, with almost 58 million tons produced in the 2012–2013 growing season, behind only China and India (the combined production of all European Union nations is larger than China) The U.S. ranks first in crop export volume; almost 50 percent of total wheat produced is exported.
Feed manufacturing
Corn, sorghum, wheat and barley are the most used cereals in the preparation of feed for the livestock, poultry, swine, and fish industry. Roller and hammer mills are the two types of processing equipment generally used to grind grains into smaller particle sizes. Milling cereal grains by mechanical action involves several forces like compression, shearing, crushing, cutting, friction and collision. The particle size of the ground cereal is very important in the animal feed production; smaller particle sizes increase the number of particles and the surface area per unit volume which increase access to digestive enzymes. Other benefits are increased ease of handling and easier mixing of ingredients. The average particle size is given as geometric mean diameter (GMD), expressed in mm or microns (µm) and the range of variation is described by geometric standard deviation (GSD), with a larger GSD representing lower uniformity. According to , GMD and GSD are accurate descriptors of particle size distribution when the particle size distribution is expressed as log data, and are distributed log normally. Studies have shown that grinding different grains with the same mill under similar conditions results in products with different particle sizes. The hardness of a grain sample is related to the percentage of fine particles obtained after grinding, with a higher percentage of fine particles from lower hardness grains. discussed that hard endosperm produces irregularly-shaped larger particles, while soft endosperm produces smaller size particles. The correlation between particle size and energy consumed is although not positive but, to obtain very fine particle sizes require higher energy which reduces the rate of production. Moreover, a very fine grind of grain has no impact on the efficiency of pelleting, nor on the power consumed during pelleting. discussed the availability of more data suggesting grain particle sizes are very important in mashed diets than in pelleted diets.