Crop Preparation Services for Market, Except Cotton Ginning

The scope of operations included under the crop preparation services for market industry is large. It includes bean, grain, and seed cleaning; corn, peanut, and nut shelling; fruit and vegetable sorting, grading, and cooling; grain, hay, fruit, and vegetable drying; packaging of fresh or farm-dried fruits and vegetables; potato and yam curing; grain fumigation; custom grinding; and tobacco grading. U.S. farms increased their total expenditures on such farm services from $26.8 billion in 2004 to $38.0 billion in 2008.

Based on figures from Dun & Bradstreet's (D&B) 2010 Industry Reports, 2,781 establishments employed 62,443 workers in this industry in the early 2010s. Most companies were small, with about 82 percent employing fewer than 25 people. However, firms with more than 250 employees accounted for almost 90 percent of total annual sales in the United States, which in 2010 were around $50 billion. California was home to 581 companies in the business and also employed the most workers, by far, with 24,088 people working in the industry. New York, however, with 52 companies and 4,501 employed, accounted for a great majority of the sales, with $41.9 billion in revenue. According to D&B's classifications, the largest sectors within this industry were cash grain crops market preparation services, fresh fruit and packing services, seed cleaning, vegetable packing services, and hay baling. Custom grain milling accounted for the largest percentage of sales.

According to Hoovers Inc., leading firms in the post-harvest crop activities industry in the early 2010s were large, diversified agricultural companies such as Bunge Limited of White Plains, New York, which had annual revenues for all divisions totaling $41.9 billion. Seaboard Corp. of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, had sales of $3.6 billion in 2009. The Andersons, Inc. of Maumee, Ohio, received 71 percent of its $3.0 billion in annual sales from its division that bought, conditioned, and resold corn, soybeans, and wheat. More specific companies in the industry included Golden Peanut Co. of Alpharetta, Georgia, which had more than 1,000 employees working at its eight shelling plants, two specialty products plants, and two hulls processing plants in the late years of the first decade of the 2000s. Golden Peanut specialized in peanut flours, which it roasted to achieve the color and flavor of roasted peanuts. Used in peanut butter flavored confections, these flours control fat migration and extend shelf life. Other industry players included Dole Fresh Vegetables of Salinas, California, a subsidiary of privately owned Dole Food Co., and Diamond Foods of San Francisco, California, which processed walnuts and other types of nuts.