During the mid-1800s one visitor called Nebraska's prairies "fat indeed compared to your New England pine plains." Today nearly 95 percent of the land is in farms and ranches. In the Sand Hills many spreads are so large that herds are tracked from the air. Corn and soybeans cover rolling eastern prairies; wheat grows on the drier central and western plains. The Ogallala aquifer irrigates corn, sugar beets, and alfalfa. More than a third of Nebraskans live in Omaha and Lincoln.