WASHINGTON D.C. — A new report claims more energy is being used by crop growers than farmers raising livestock.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the top three energy users among crops in 2013 were rice, peanuts and corn, followed by cotton, barley, sorghum, oats, wheat and soybeans.

Fuels, lubricants, electricity and fertilizer were among the energy sources measured for the study, which appeared in a recent EIA’s “Today in Energy” brief. The article was based on findings compiled by the USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey on the amount of energy used to grow and harvest crops and raise livestock.

According to the findings, about $250 worth of energy was spent to grow an acre of rice, but at the lowest end of the spectrum the cost for every acre of soybeans was just over $50.

The report also claims the U.S. agriculture industry used nearly 800 trillion BTUs of energy in 2012 – equivalent to what was consumed during the same period as the entire state of Utah.

Crops used close to 500 trillion BTUs, while the remainder was consumed by the livestock industry. Out of all energy sources, crop and livestock operators both used more distillate fuels, or about 400 trillion BTUs combined, in 2012.

Distillates are used by crop growers, for example, to run heavy machinery for doing tasks such as tilling, harvesting and weed control. Electricity and propane are also used in large quantities in areas such as drying crops with a high moisture content, according to the findings.

Those in the livestock industry may be smiling at the findings, given some past studies that indicated farm animal operations consumed the most energy. John Grimes, an extension agent with The Ohio State University and member of the Ohio Cattlemen’s Assoc., said he’s not all that surprised at the findings.

He said dairy and beef cattle, for example, are often kept outdoors to graze for as many as eight months a year. And during that time period, animals are eating grass and other vegetation that grows naturally.

The same cattle for the remainder of the year are indoors, which requires considerably more energy to keep shelters warm, as well as grain and other feed that replaces the vegetation no longer available to cattle and other livestock during the winter, he said.

“The farther we get away from pasture production, I can see the energy requirements going up,” said Grimes.

He said another factor perhaps in the livestock industry’s good showing is the ongoing effort to use land unsuitable to grow corn and other grains for raising beef and dairy cattle. “That’s why maybe cattle comes out so good; I’m just speculating,” he said.

Ken Colombini, communications director for the National Corn Growers Assoc., questions the accuracy of the study, particularly the disparity in energy use among crop growers and livestock operators. The study, he said, did not take into account the amount of energy used to grow grain used to feed livestock.

As a result, he said the findings could be misleading because crops used for feed require energy consumed when eaten by cattle, pigs, chickens and other animals. He also pointed to government figures that show livestock are the biggest customers for corn growers nationwide, consuming about 50 percent of the corn grown in the United States – and if those figures were taken into account for the study, the results could even things out.

“It’s not kind of right to say that livestock is such a smaller energy user than crops,” said Colombini.

For people who might use the findings to criticize agriculture, he said farming is not only a huge part of the economy given its jobs and salaries, but for its obvious importance: “People have to eat.”

Sometimes, Grimes said, studies cannot be taken at face value because groups depending on their bias have been known to skew the results of their findings to reflect their particular opinion about an issue or cause.

He won’t argue with these results, though: “Anytime we have a study that comes out flattering for livestock, I’m okay with that.”