A lima bean grows inside a flat pod, and this quiz counts the ones picked green — while the seeds are still soft, the way they turn up in a freezer bag. In the 2022 Census of Agriculture USDA counted those acres state by state and printed a figure for 41 states. Three more are hidden behind USDA’s withheld mark, two carry the mark USDA uses for an amount too small to show as a whole acre, and four states have no line in this table at all. Put these three in order, most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Beans need room, and room needs a big state. I am taking the biggest one on this list and I am not even a little bit nervous. 🐾
2Answer
The real order is…
Delaware — 5,872 acres, about 1.64× what second-place Wisconsin harvested, and more than a quarter of the 22,361 acres in the whole country. Now look at where that came from. Delaware is the second-smallest state by land area; only Rhode Island is smaller. Third place, Maryland (2,166 acres), is right next door; second place, Wisconsin (3,585 acres), is far away in the Midwest. And these three are not merely the top of a printed list: everything USDA did not print for a state adds up to 1,912 acres, which is less than third place — so no hidden state can push any of them down. All three are national places. So what does USDA say about growing lima beans in Delaware? Not one word about how much space the state has. It talks about air. “Temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit or above reduce pollination and pod set,” it says — but “High humidity favors pollination and pod set and is one reason lima beans have been grown successfully in Delaware,” and even “Fogs, heavy dews, and their moderating effects on temperature are helpful in pollination and pod set.” Those are the conditions the profile records for growing limas in this state, in one county — Sussex, which it names as where Delaware’s production is concentrated. Whether they are also the reason Delaware sits at the top of this particular table, the profile does not say, and neither does this quiz. One last way to feel the size of this. All of Delaware’s green lima beans together cover 5,872 acres. In another quiz on this site, the average farm in Wyoming covers 2,729 acres. So the entire lima bean crop of the national champion would fit on a little more than two average Wyoming farms. Biscuit’s Field Note is about the seeds behind this crop, and who has been keeping them.
📚 BackgroundThis is a crop with opinions about the weather, and Delaware’s own crop profile — written for USDA’s regional pest-management program — states them. Heat is the enemy: “Temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit or above reduce pollination and pod set.” Damp air is the friend: “High humidity favors pollination and pod set and is one reason lima beans have been grown successfully in Delaware,” and even “Fogs, heavy dews, and their moderating effects on temperature are helpful in pollination and pod set.” So growers aim the crop past the worst of the summer — “Delaware yields generally increase with later planting dates, which corresponds to both higher rainfall, cooler day temperatures, and cooler night temperatures in September and October.” The same profile calls limas “the cornerstone crop of the vegetable-processing industry” in the state and records that “Production in Delaware is concentrated in Sussex County.” None of that is what the USDA table below measures, though — the table only counts acres.(USDA Regional IPM Centers, “Crop Profile for Beans (Lima) in Delaware” (prepared June 1999, revised July 2006; supported by USDA NIFA), sections General Production Information, Production Regions and Cultural Practices)↗ (opens in a new tab)
🐕Biscuit's fun facts
📚 Stated as fact by textbooks / public agencies
Why “lima”? The U.S. National Agricultural Library, part of USDA, explains that the name comes from Lima, the capital of Peru in South America, even though in English people say “LIME-uh.” Long ago in Peru, the Moche people (about A.D. 100 to 800) treated lima beans as something special, and their pottery even shows “bean warriors.” Lima beans reached early America, too: in 1793 George Washington sent some lima beans to his Mount Vernon estate, to be given to the gardener, because Martha Washington wanted it.
Lima beans used to be climbing plants that needed poles. Then, in 1890, a man named Asa Palmer in Chester, Pennsylvania, noticed something odd. Cutworms (caterpillars that chew young plants) had wiped out his bean patch, but one little plant was still doing well, and it was a bush, only about a foot high, not a climber. He planted its seeds the next year and sold the seeds to the Burpee seed company. By 1907, the bush lima bean had been developed and named the Fordhook. Later, a USDA breeder developed a bush lima called Fordhook 242, which kept producing even in hot weather.
Beans need room, and room needs a big state. I am taking the biggest one on this list and I am not even a little bit nervous. 🐾
3Compare
Green lima beans harvested (acres, 2022)
🇺🇸 United States (national)22,361 acres
Delaware#15,872 acres
Most: Delaware (5,872 acres). Forty-one states appear in this list — but the top three of them hold more than half of the country's acres between them.
Note: acres of lima beans harvested green in 2022, from USDA’s five-yearly Census of Agriculture. Lima beans left on the plant to dry hard are a different USDA line and are not counted here. The United States bar is USDA’s own national figure. USDA NASS. USDA printed a green lima bean acreage for 41 states. Three — Alaska, Oregon and Tennessee — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms. Two — Montana and Nebraska — carry (Z), the mark for an amount too small to show as one whole acre. The other four — Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming — have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print for a state adds up to 1,912 acres, less than the third-place figure, so the first three places here are national places. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
USDA printed a green lima bean acreage for 41 states. Three — Alaska, Oregon and Tennessee — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms. Two — Montana and Nebraska — carry (Z), the mark for an amount too small to show as one whole acre. The other four — Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming — have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print for a state adds up to 1,912 acres, less than the third-place figure, so the first three places here are national places. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022)
Sources
Data as of: 2022
USDA NASS Quick Stats: BEANS, GREEN, LIMA - ACRES HARVESTED, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state↗ (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-07) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA printed a green lima bean acreage for 41 states. Three more — Alaska, Oregon and Tennessee — carry the withheld mark (D), which USDA uses when printing a state’s number would give away information about individual farms. Two — Montana and Nebraska — carry (Z), the mark USDA uses for an amount too small to show as one whole acre. The other four states — Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming — have no line in this table at all. Everything USDA did not print for a state adds up to 1,912 acres, which is less than the third-place figure, so the first three places here are national places. A state with no line is not the same as a state growing none. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick CENSUS / Census of Agriculture, year 2022, commodity BEANS, short description BEANS, GREEN, LIMA - ACRES HARVESTED, Total domain, and compare states.