Dan Severson is the New Castle County Cooperative Extension agent and on 10/21 he came and lectured about the Livestock industry in Delaware. He started off by talking about Delaware farms, number of farms, and how much they produce. He spoke about Delaware’s Agriculture Land Preservation Districts and how the farmers sell their land rights to the government so that they don’t build on that land. He discussed how WWII affected livestock production and why spikes in livestock production happened. Beef and pork consumption is down since 1985 but chicken and poultry are up since then. Pigs, Cattle, Goat and Sheep numbers in Delaware have gone down. The number of livestock is being shipped out to other countries and other states to be produced. Lastly, he talked about trends and marketing. Niche markets, like lotion from goats or ice cream from the milk of cows work for small markets in order to be successful and make money. For our homework, we had to find something in the grocery store that is labeled as “Non-GMO”. I found a caramel dipping sauce that was labeled as “Non-GMO” even though caramel is essentially butter and sugar condensed down.