A hard clam is the thick-shelled clam that ends up in chowder, and it is a single species — Mercenaria mercenaria — carrying a whole pile of different names. USDA counts the ones that clam farms sell, and gives this one animal its own line, apart from every other clam. For 2023 it printed a hard clam figure for seven states; five more carry a withheld mark instead of a number, and the other 38 have no line in this table at all. Clams need salt water, so this is a coast question — but which coast? Tap these three most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Clams live in the ocean, so I want the state with the most ocean in front of it. Going Pacific. Big water, big clams. 🐾
2Answer
The order USDA printed is…
Virginia — 51,832,000 dollars dollars’ worth, which is almost exactly half of the 105,066,000 of farmed hard clams sold in the whole country. Not the Pacific: the Atlantic. Below Virginia the printed list runs Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Massachusetts and North Carolina — and then Hawaii, whose entire state line reads $1,000. Virginia’s own marine institute says the same thing in words: “Virginia now has the largest hard clam industry in the nation.” But Biscuit was not completely wrong, and this is the good part. USDA also prints a line for clams of every kind, and on that line the first state in the country is Washington. The Pacific has a clam that the hard clam table does not count: the geoduck (say it “gooey-duck”), which Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife calls “The world’s largest burrowing clam,” says is “found buried two to three feet deep in mud, sand, or gravel,” and reports that it can “live at least as long as 168 years.” USDA’s geoduck line has exactly one state in it — Washington — so on that line the state number and the national number are the same number: $51,557,000. Hold it next to Virginia’s hard clams, $51,832,000. Two completely different clams, on two different oceans, about $275,000 apart. Biscuit’s Field Note is about the names people have hung on the hard clam.
📚 BackgroundThe hard clam is one species with a pile of names on top of it. NOAA Fisheries places it “in intertidal and subtidal areas from Nova Scotia, Canada to Florida” and describes the farming plainly: “Clams are grown in tidal areas. They can be grown directly on the beach bottom or in mesh bags, trays, or pens that are secured to the bottom.” Virginia’s own marine research institute, VIMS, traces the method back to its Eastern Shore Lab, where Michael Castagna and his staff “conducted the research and development of methods for aquaculture of the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria in the 1960’s and ‘70’s” — and writes today that “Virginia now has the largest hard clam industry in the nation.” The USDA table below is a separate check on that sentence.(NOAA Fisheries, species page “Northern Quahog”; Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Eastern Shore Laboratory, “Hard Clams”)↗ (opens in a new tab)
Clams live in the ocean, so I want the state with the most ocean in front of it. Going Pacific. Big water, big clams. 🐾
3Compare
Hard clams sold by clam farms (dollars, 2023)
🇺🇸 United States (national)105,066,000 dollars
Virginia#151,832,000 dollars
Most: Virginia (51,832,000 dollars); smallest printed figure: Hawaii (1,000 dollars).
Note: dollars of hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) sold by aquaculture farms in 2023, from USDA’s Census of Aquaculture. Farms only — clams that people dig themselves on public flats are not in this table. Other clams, including manila clams and the geoduck, are counted on their own separate lines. USDA NASS. USDA printed a hard clam figure for seven states. Five more — Alaska, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire and New York — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to $33,662,000, which is more than the $9,034,000 second place printed — so first place is the only place here that can be called a national one, and the states below it are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle. A state with no line is not the same as a state farming none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
USDA printed a hard clam figure for seven states. Five more — Alaska, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire and New York — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to $33,662,000, which is more than the $9,034,000 second place printed — so first place is the only place here that can be called a national one, and the states below it are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle. A state with no line is not the same as a state farming none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2023)
Sources
Data as of: 2023
USDA NASS Quick Stats: MOLLUSKS, CLAMS, HARD - SALES, MEASURED IN $, 2023 Census of Aquaculture, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-05) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA printed a hard clam sales figure for seven states. Five more — Alaska, Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire and New York — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms, and the other 38 states have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print comes to $33,662,000, which is more than the $9,034,000 second place printed — so first place is the only national place here, and the states below it are printed figures whose national rank this table cannot settle. A state with no line is not the same as a state farming none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick AQUACULTURE / MOLLUSKS / MOLLUSKS, CLAMS, HARD - SALES, MEASURED IN $, Census year 2023, Total domain, and compare states.