Breaking down the NBA Finals with agriculture

Jun 01, 2017

Ohio and California square off for the third straight year

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

The NBA takes center stage Thursday night as the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors meet for the third consecutive year in the NBA Finals.

Last year, Cleveland brought a championship back to Ohio. And in 2015 it was Golden State emerging victorious.

Basketball analysts have debated whether the dominance of LeBron James or Golden State’s addition of Kevin Durant will lift their respective teams to a championship.

Once again, Farms.com will use data from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service to determine the winner of the NBA championship.

** Signals advantage for each team

	Ohio	California
NBA Team
Number of farms	74,500	76,700**
Total acres operated	14,000,000	25,400,000**
Beef cow inventory (as of Jan 1, 2017)	288,000	655,000**
Milk production ($)	$929,376,000	$6,070,350,000**
Top commodity ($)	Soybeans - $2,545,477,000**	Strawberries - $1,834,783,000
Total value of ag products sold ($)	$10,064,085,000	$42,627,472,000**
Average age of principal operator	56.8**	60.1
Number of farms with more than $500,000 in sales	4,639	9,519**
Cut Christmas trees and short rotation woody crops ($)	$3,988,000**	$2,706,000

Judging by the data, the Golden State Warriors will be the 2017 NBA champions.

Be sure to also check out Farms.com's agricultural breakdown of the Stanley Cup Final.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.