All posts by ealbiez

Georgie Cartanza-Evolution of the Delmarva Poultry Industry

As AGRI 130 is my first official agriculture class, I didn’t know what to expect out of Ms. Cartanza’s speech. She talked about how many people are misinformed about agriculture in general because of social media and other outlets, and I’d say that I definitely have been misinformed. In the past I watched the documentary called Food, Inc. and forever have had the image of chickens being sloppily kicked or thrown around. I thought that chickens were in confined spaces and were generally being treated very poorly. This is the link that shows a scene from the documentary where they show the inside of a poultry house late at night- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enwU5jIXSlU. The scene I am referring to starts at around 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I am now learning that this just isn’t how the industry is, especially when it comes to organic farming.

I’ve learned that with today’s technology, it is much easier for chickens to be comfortable. As Ms. Cartanza brought up, farmers should want their main source of income to be as comfortable as possible. Nowadays, they can have one panel that can control the temperature easily. This makes the lives of farmers easier and more productive as they now don’t have to go around and individually change the speed of each fan they have. Another misconception of the industry is that chickens are meatier because farmers are giving them steroids. When in reality this has happened through natural selection and the farmers mating the characters that the consumer wants. It is important for people to understand how the industry actually operates before deciding if they are for or against it.