September 25th, 2019 Mr. Ed Key talked to the class about agriculture in Iowa and California. Iowa is an agriculture force. Although it is ranked behind California in cash farm. Iowa has 87,500 farmers till 30.5 acres. That’s a lot of farmers to cover a lot of land. Iowa ranks first in corn production. Farmers harvest 13.1 million acres of corn. Iowa also ranks first in soybean production. They have 9.8 million acres of land, 553.7 million bushels. That’s 57 bushels an acre! Iowa ranks first in hog production as well. They raise 20.9 hogs annually. That’s 32% of the nation’s pork production. They are the nations leading producer of eggs. Iowa chickens laid 12.5 billion eggs last year. Mr. Key also taught us a term; loess: which is wind blown deposits of silt and clay. California is ranked first in tomato’s, almonds, grapes, milk and cream, strawberries, flowers and foliage’s, walnuts, hay, and lettuce. California exports 26% of its agriculture production by volume. California is the 10th largest general economy in the world. 95% tomato’s come from California. These two states imply a lot of hard work and effort in providing the nation with certain grains, fruits, dairy, and meats. They feed millions of people a year. The coolest thing I learned was that 40% percent of corn crops go in animal feed and 40% goes to ethanol.