The Red River Valley has been called “The Breadbasket of the World” because so much food is raised there. Sugar beets, potatoes, corn, and wheat are some of the main crops raised by farmers in the Red River Valley.

"The Red River Valley" therefore is an unfortunate misnomer for this landscape. It is not a valley in the sense that it was formed by a river. Instead, the origins of this flat plain lie as the floor of what was an enormous glacial lake. The actual "valley" of the Red River is only a few hundred feet wide at Fargo.

The soil is very deep. The alluvial soil depth at Grand Forks, including topsoil, loam and clay, is “fifty to seventy-five feet deep,” and under that lies cretaceous shale 300-feet thick – over granite or gneiss bedrock.