On Monday, September 16th the former Secretary of Agriculture, Ed Kee, came in and spoke about Delaware agriculture. He referred to Delaware as the “Food Shed” for the eastern United States. Because of Delaware’s location on the east coast, it is 8 hours from a third of the U.S population, which allows food grown here to be easily transported to a large number of people. He then went on to explain some of the history of agriculture in Delaware. Early on there was a large amount of canning of fruits and vegetables. specifically tomatoes were being canned in overwhelming proportionally with around 90% of canning in Delaware being tomatoes. Eventually, the canning industry left because of the high costs and in its place the poultry industry emerged and became a 2 billion dollar industry. Along with the growth in the poultry industry, corn farming became larger and the two of them together made up a majority of Delaware agricultural revenue. Ed then started to speak about how the population of the earth is expected to reach over 9 billion by 2050 and how important Asia will be with the changes that will be made to feed this population.