US English — “primary grains being produced” vs. “major cereals being produced”

Question

I am correcting a Spanish-to-English translation that states,

The primary grains being produced in the world are maize, wheat, rice, barley, sorghum and oats.

I would prefer to use cereals rather than grains, but am not sure whether I should use "the major cereals being produced" or "the primary cereals being produced", or perhaps "most of the cereals".

It is referring to the quantity of cereals which are being produced globally at present.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

While it is often used as a synonym for primary, consider the term principal

first in order of importance; main: the country’s principal cities

It sounds more apt in your context

The principal cereals being produced in the world are maize, wheat, rice, barley, sorghum and oats.

Answer 2

First, the grains are a back door input to the front door output of cereal produce, albeit that it is indirect as respects livestock feed. So, to highlight statistically significant produce output most concisely, be it Spanish or English, the descriptive coupling of adjective to noun--viz, "cereal grains"--would not be inconsistent with accepted, and commonly understood (and likewise understandable) agribusiness, commodity, ...or rhetorical nomenclature, whether it be English or Spanish.

The introduction of some other, supposedly cardinal or embellishing descriptor is both redundant (primacy or importance being already implicit within the list form of presentation) as well as immaterial (what need is there to know by inference of grains not used, comparatively speaking, in statistically significant amounts in the value-added-cereals supply chain).

Moreover, avoidance of "overindulgences" in rhetoric is most often the safest course in translating, not only for the sake of terseness, but also to avoid translation pitfalls.

So I vote for less-is-more: The cereal grains most produced in the world are....