On October 21st, Dan Severson came into our class to talk about an overview of livestock. I found Dan’s humour to be really great and I think it helped drive his lecture. I found that a lot of what Dan talked about I had already known about, mainly from studying for the first exam. Dan has a lot of small ruminant animals such as goats and he also has pigs. 

First, he talked about Delaware’s farms. Delaware has 2,500 farms, 500,000 acres of farmland, and $8 million of product. The biggest expense for farms, specifically animal related farms, spend most of their money on feed for the animals. Delaware is the largest producer in lima beans but 29% of the farmland in Delaware is for corn and soybeans. 

Next, he talked about US history and how it relates to US agriculture both back then and today. After World War 1, the number of farms went down because a lot of children who worked on farms went to war instead. Yet after World War 2, the number of farms went up, but many of those children, now young adults, returned to work in the assembly line. Although we have fewer farms, we still grow a lot. With newer innovations, we can now grow more with less.