Asparagus does not start over every year. A grower plants a crown — a lump of roots with buds on it — and the same plants push up new spears every spring, for years. Penn State Extension times the wait: the first spring you may cut for about seven days, and the planting is not fully grown up until year five. So this map is not really about where asparagus could grow. It is about where somebody planted it and then waited. Which state cut asparagus from the most acres? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
California grows every vegetable. California! 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Michigan — 9,895 acres, out of 20,005 for the whole country. That is about half of America's asparagus ground sitting in one state, and 4.56× the next state, California (2,172), with Washington (2,125) and New Jersey (1,970) just behind. There is a second Michigan number that is even more lopsided. USDA keeps a separate line for asparagus grown for processing — the spears headed for a can or a freezer bag instead of the fresh shelf — and Michigan holds 3,482 of the country's 3,876 processing acres. Nearly nine out of every ten. Whatever is keeping asparagus in Michigan, it is not only about what looks good on a shop shelf.
📚 BackgroundAsparagus does not behave like the vegetables next to it in the shop. Penn State Extension calls it “a perennial crop” and describes what a grower actually plants: “Crowns are developed root systems with a fairly defined storage organ and growth buds.” Then comes the waiting — “The length of time for harvesting asparagus each year increases gradually until the plants reach full maturity (five years)” — and then the hurry, because spears “can increase in length by as much as 2 inches per day,” so a field is cut every single day of the season. Meanwhile the national picture has been shrinking: “U.S. acreage is currently less than one-third of what it was 20 years ago due to increased imports from Central and South America.” That makes this map an unusual one. It is not really a map of where asparagus can grow. It is a map of where it stayed.(Penn State Extension, “Asparagus Production”)↗ (opens in a new tab)
Note: this is acres harvested in 2022, from USDA's Census of Agriculture — a count taken once every five years, not a yearly estimate. Asparagus is a perennial, so these acres were planted in earlier years and cut again in 2022. USDA NASS. USDA printed an asparagus figure for 47 states. Three — Delaware, Georgia and Montana — are withheld because printing a number for them would give away information about individual farms, and no state is missing from the table for any other reason. Everything the three withheld states could hold together is smaller than each of the top four printed figures, so first through fourth place here are national positions. Further down the list the numbers get small enough that a withheld state could sit among them, so read the tail as the order among the states with a printed number.
Asparagus acres harvested (2022 Census of Agriculture)
Rank
State
Value
Share of U.S. total
#1
Michigan
9,895 acres
49.5%
#2
California
2,172 acres
10.9%
#3
Washington
2,125 acres
10.6%
#4
New Jersey
1,970 acres
9.8%
#5
South Carolina
482 acres
2.4%
#6
New York
337 acres
1.7%
#7
Indiana
297 acres
1.5%
#8
Wisconsin
262 acres
1.3%
#9
Pennsylvania
225 acres
1.1%
#10
Massachusetts
215 acres
1.1%
#11
Oregon
193 acres
1%
#12
North Carolina
183 acres
0.9%
#13
Maryland
171 acres
0.9%
#14
Minnesota
141 acres
0.7%
#15
Virginia
123 acres
0.6%
#16
Illinois
119 acres
0.6%
#17
Ohio
116 acres
0.6%
#18
Idaho
87 acres
0.4%
#19
Iowa
76 acres
0.4%
#20
Kansas
60 acres
0.3%
#21
Colorado
50 acres
0.2%
#21
Kentucky
50 acres
0.2%
#23
Vermont
47 acres
0.2%
#24
Maine
42 acres
0.2%
#25
Connecticut
38 acres
0.2%
#25
West Virginia
38 acres
0.2%
#27
New Hampshire
35 acres
0.2%
#28
Missouri
33 acres
0.2%
#29
Nebraska
28 acres
0.1%
#30
South Dakota
22 acres
0.1%
#31
Arizona
21 acres
0.1%
#32
Oklahoma
17 acres
0.1%
#32
Tennessee
17 acres
0.1%
#34
Texas
16 acres
0.1%
#35
Arkansas
13 acres
0.1%
#36
Alabama
11 acres
0.1%
#37
Mississippi
9 acres
0%
#37
New Mexico
9 acres
0%
#39
Louisiana
8 acres
0%
#40
Florida
7 acres
0%
#40
Utah
7 acres
0%
#42
Hawaii
6 acres
0%
#42
Nevada
6 acres
0%
#44
Rhode Island
5 acres
0%
#45
Alaska
3 acres
0%
#45
North Dakota
3 acres
0%
#47
Wyoming
1 acres
0%
🇺🇸 USA (total)
20,005 acres
100%
USDA printed an asparagus figure for 47 states. Three — Delaware, Georgia and Montana — are withheld because printing a number for them would give away information about individual farms, and no state is missing from the table for any other reason. Everything the three withheld states could hold together is smaller than each of the top four printed figures, so first through fourth place here are national positions. Further down the list the numbers get small enough that a withheld state could sit among them, so read the tail as the order among the states with a printed number.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022 (Census of Agriculture))
Sources
Data as of: 2022 (Census of Agriculture)
USDA NASS Quick Stats: ASPARAGUS - ACRES HARVESTED, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-08-23) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA printed an asparagus figure for 47 states. Three — Delaware, Georgia and Montana — are withheld because printing a number for them would give away information about individual farms, and no state is missing from the table for any other reason. Everything the three withheld states could hold together is smaller than each of the top four printed figures, so first through fourth place here are national positions — a check this site re-runs on every build. Further down the list the numbers get small, and a withheld state could sit among them, so read the tail as the order among the states with a printed number.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick ASPARAGUS / ASPARAGUS - ACRES HARVESTED, Census year 2022, Total domain, and compare states.