Delaware Agriculture and Global Markets
Small State, Serious Output
Agriculture is Delaware's leading industry. It is also the clearest example of what a small state can do in world markets when it concentrates on what it does best. Delaware has roughly 2,200 farms working under half a million acres, and in the 2022 Census of Agriculture those farms sold more than $1.6 billion in livestock, poultry and poultry products and more than $470 million in crops. In the 2017 Census, Delaware ranked first in the nation in the value of agricultural sales per acre of farmland and second in the nation, behind only California, in average sales per farm. That is not scale. That is density, and density is what makes a small state competitive in global trade.
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World Trade Center Delaware treats agriculture as a growth sector, not a heritage sector. Every additional dollar of Delaware agricultural output that finds a buyer overseas is a dollar added to state GDP that domestic demand alone would not have produced. Our work with the sector runs through the Delaware Department of Agriculture, the state's commodity boards, the University of Delaware and Delaware State University, and our signatory membership on the World Trade Centers Association Agriculture Member Advisory Council, which connects Delaware producers to more than 300 World Trade Centers in over 100 countries.
How We Work With Delaware Agriculture
Producers, processors and agribusinesses come to World Trade Center Delaware for market access, buyer introductions and country intelligence. We provide bilateral trade reports, tariff analysis, export strategy and country export and import data for agricultural sectors. We connect Delaware companies to counterpart World Trade Centers in target markets, and we use the WTCA Agriculture Member Advisory Council to reach agricultural trade networks worldwide. We work alongside the Delaware Department of Agriculture, Export Delaware, the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, the Small Business Development Center and the state's land grant institutions rather than duplicating them.
Crops That Travel
Delaware's grain economy exists in part to feed its poultry economy, and in part to reach world markets on its own. In 2025 the region's chicken companies purchased 96 million bushels of corn, 42 million bushels of soybeans and 270,000 bushels of wheat, drawn primarily from Delaware, Maryland and Virginia growers, at a total feed cost of $1.2 billion. Even so, Delaware's harvest is not enough to feed its own flocks, which makes the state a net importer of feed grain and a live participant in global commodity pricing whether it exports a bushel or not.
Corn and Soybeans
The backbone of Delaware field agriculture, planted across hundreds of thousands of acres, feeding the poultry sector and moving into the international soybean and feed grain trade. Feed grains and soybean products rank immediately behind poultry among Delaware's agricultural export categories.
Wheat
Delaware growers harvest wheat both for grain revenue and for straw bedding used in poultry houses, and double crop it with late season soybeans to maximize yield per acre.
Lima Beans
In the 2017 Census of Agriculture Delaware ranked first in the nation in lima bean acreage, with close to a third of the entire United States crop grown in this one state. It is a genuine specialty position and an underused export story.
Fruit, Vegetables and Specialty Crops
Watermelon, sweet corn, potatoes, greenhouse and nursery production, and a growing wine and floriculture sector. Delaware supplies fresh produce across the East Coast through the Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association of Delaware, the Mar-Del Watermelon Association and the Delaware Nursery and Landscape Association. Delaware also holds more than 100 recognized Century Farms, operations held in the same family for over a hundred years.
The Port That Makes It Work
Delaware's agricultural trade position is not only about what leaves the state. The Port of Wilmington is the leading United States gateway for imports of fresh fruit, bananas and juice concentrate, and the largest banana port in North America. Dole and Chiquita each call the port twice weekly year round, supplying roughly 200 million consumers across the United States and Canada. The port is the leading United States point of entry for Chilean winter fruit, receiving over 16 million cases annually, and the leading entry point for Moroccan clementines, alongside Argentine apples and pears, Peruvian grapes and New Zealand kiwifruit. Its 800,000 square feet of dockside cold storage across six warehouses is the largest such complex in the country.
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That infrastructure cuts both ways. A refrigerated logistics network built to bring tropical fruit in is the same network that can move Delaware protein and produce out. World Trade Center Delaware works with exporters to use it in both directions.