How many farmers does it take to make a pizza?

In honor of National Pizza Day, let's figure out how many farmers it takes to make one of America's favorite foods!

I will admit, I love celebrating all of the fun and quirky food holidays, and it was no surprise to me to see that pizza has its own day! According to Slice, Americans eat 3 Billion Pizzas a year! That means everyday, 13% of the population eats some form of pizza! Personally for our family we usually have pizza weekly every Friday. Pizza is a great comfort food that you can customize to your mood; everything from a simple cheese & pepperoni pizza, to something that is unique with different meats, veggies and even fruit on it.

So how many farmers does it take to make a pizza?

Well, that depends of course the number of toppings, but let's start at the base - the crust!

Pizza Crust - Wheat, Soybean, Sugar Cane or Sugar Beet 

My go to homemade pizza crust is made up of flour, oil, sugar, yeast, salt and water. The flour is made from wheat that predominately comes from the hard red wheat varieties. The vegetable oil that goes into the crust is made from soybeans. And the sugar can come from either a sugar cane or a sugar beet farmer. So just in the crust alone we are already up to three farmers.

Pizza Sauce - Tomato/Produce, Herb

Next layer is the pizza sauce! Now of course there are different types of pizza sauces that you can top your pie with but the traditional pizza sauce is made up of tomatoes and different blends of herbs and spices. I will admit that I usually just used a jar sauce from my local grocery store but have loved canning pizza sauce with tomatoes from my garden at the end of the summer with some onion powder, garlic salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and oregano. Our farmer count is now up to five!

Pizza Toppings - Vegetable/Produce, Pig, Dairy

Now it is time to top our pizza! This is where you could bring in a lot of different types of farmers but for me personally I love a pizza with mushrooms, peppers and onions. The pepper and onion vegetable toppings are possibly all coming from the same farmer that grew our tomatoes but the mushrooms are most likely going to come from another farmer, as growing mushrooms is a different process than vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and onions.

Next is some type of protein, which for me and my family is usually pepperoni and/or sausage that all comes from pork from pig farmers like my family and I. Adding different pork products to your pizza is a great way to adding flavor and vitamins & minerals.

And lastly, you have to top your pizza with lots of cheese that comes from all of our dairy farmers! The cheese not only helps bring the whole pizza together, it also gives you even more protein and calcium.

My youngest daughter standing in front of the
homemade pizzas she helped make!

So how many farmers does it take to make a pizza?

According to our calculations a minimum of seven farmers, but as you can see from some of my favorite pizza toppings it can be even more!

Pizza is a great way to celebrate lots of different types of farms and to eat something that is delicious and nutritious. You could very easily create a pizza with something from every food group on it!

Who's hungry for pizza now? What are your favorite pizza toppings?