Bushel

A bushel is a unit of volume, used (with somewhat different definitions) in the systems of Imperial units and U.S. customary units. It is used for volumes of dry commodities, not liquids, most often in agriculture.

The Imperial bushel equals 8 Imperial gallons. The U.S. system recognises three different bushels: a general measure for dry volumes, the "U.S. Bushel", and two grain measures, which though derived from the volume measures are specified in terms of weight:

• 1 bushel (maize) = 56 lb exactly = 25.401 kg approx.
• 1 bushel (wheat) = 60 lb exactly = 27.215 kg approx.

The U.S. Bushel is defined as 8 gallons, but unfortunately these are gallons of dry measure, not the liquid gallons with which most Americans are more familiar, and the two are not the same. Nor are they the same as the Imperial gallon.

Government policy in both the United States and the United Kingdom is to phase out units such as the bushel and replace them with the metric system as used for all purposes in the rest of the world, and for all scientific and technical purposes world wide. It is therefore important to know how the bushel relates to the metric equivalent:

• 1 US bushel = 35.239072 liters
• 1 Imperial bushel = 36.36872 litres