Mark Lynas, a world- renowned environmentalist, spoke at the 2013 oxford conference about genetically modified organisms and how his perspective on them changed when faced with science. During earlier years, Mark believed that GMOs were unhealthy for the people and the environment that used more pesticide’s then crops with their initial genetics; causing him to set up a campaign that was against GMOs and the usage of them. However, as the years proceeded forward, Mark slowly came faced with different experiences that led him to the scientific part of GMOs rather than the opinion of an Anti-GMO Environmentalist. This essentially led him to the discovery that GMOs use less pesticides and produce higher yields with less land which allows producers to feed more people with less of a need of additional investments such as, pesticides, that are believed to harm the surrounding ecosystems, people, and overall environment.
With this discovery, came a realization, that in years-time the world will need to feed the equivalent of 9.5 billion people with less land, water, fertilizer and pesticides with a global demand increase for food of 100%; to keep up with the growing population and the changes in economic stability within it. In addition to this realization, researchers proclaimed to the Anti- GMO Environmentalist and their act to remove GMOs would cause the world to face great hunger due to the lack of ability to feed the world with traditional or organic crops. Before this realization, Mr. Lynas also believed that organic crops were healthier and safer and would be better to grow overall. However, he changed his mind after the discovery that organic crops grow slower, need more labor, and more land to produce enough food to feed the world as well as are less likely to produce a good yield to contribute to the supply of food for the people.
With organic crops, he also found that they have caused more people to die and suffer, such as the Ecoli, breakout then GMO crops have in the 70 years they have been around. “The GMO debate is over, it is finished, we no longer need to discuss whether or not it’s not safe…there have been a substantial amount of meals that have caused no harm” (Mark Lynas). Essentially, Mr. Lynas was faced with scientific information instead of opinionated information which allowed him to realize that GMOs were safer and a more efficient technology to use now and in the future time and hopes that with this information, he will become a better environmentalist.
On September 11, 2019 Ms. Michele Walfred spoke to us about managing social media. She began with a bit of history about herself and her educational background. She was also a UD alum who wanted to major in art but switched to creative writing because the writing classes were offered later in the day and she felt she would be able to sleep.
Through a series of events that occurred while she was pursuing her education, she ended up altering her plans once again, pursuing a ‘real job’ instead of the Bohemian-style artist life she had envisioned. She ended up at the UD Agricultural Extension office with no what the 4H program was, believing she might be working with children or seeing eye dogs. She managed to land a position and earned her Associates and Masters, but along the way she stated, she always tried to take jobs for, ‘what she wanted to do, not what she was good at.’
It was at this point she mentioned Professor Isaacs, a professor who recognized her strengths and directed or recommended her to tasks accordingly. Ms. Walfred also took the opportunity to go to weekend and evening events on her own volition, looking to increase her skills whenever possible.
After the brief bio, Ms. Walfred showed the class screenshots of the homepages of three of her own websites on different platforms. She noted that across all platforms, her image or headshot was the same. She recommend we all try something similar to ‘brand ourselves’, expressing creativity through banners, but keeping our message clear on our own ‘search-able’ public sites. She recommended any potentially controversial images or writings go on separate private accounts, but reminded us that the internet is forever and we must behave and conduct ourselves in a professional manner when putting information and images out into the great wide Web.
Ms. Walfred also stated that complete absence of any digital platform can hurt and then championed Twitter as the platform of choice. She told us that by sharing on our social media we can also champion causes and issues that we care about- an example she used was an article about the highest U.S. suicide rates occurring among veterinarians. She then showed us a YouTube clip from a movie called, ‘A Bronx Tale’to illustrate a point about how all the ‘little’ actions matter and first impressions count.
Ms. Walfredconcluded by telling us how important social media can be for us in agriculture and to agriculture in general. First, she stressed the importance of being an, ‘Ag-vocate’ helping the environment in different ways, such as participating in, ‘Meatless Mondays’. She also mentioned ‘Delaware Ag Week’ and the impressive salaries of Social Media Managers at around ≈$75, 000. She also touched on the controversy that farmers often face- citing back to Ms. Cartanza’s presentation, namely the damage farming causes to the environment. A crowd of young males with SmartPhones will not post to their social media about how they are actively learning how not to pollute, the very thing a consumer might accuse them of.
Ms. Walfred ended on a quote that essentially said, ‘“To tell someone they’re wrong, 1st tell them how they’re right” – Blaise Pacal (Paraphrase)’She encourage us to stand up to mis-information while combatting misinformation with facts.
On September 7, 2019 the entire class took a trip to Dover, Delaware to visit a poultry farm. Though I grew up not too far from this farm, I never new of it’s existence. The farm is owned by a Ms. Georgie Cartanza, a Nuffield Scholar and the current University of DE Poultry Extension Agent. Ms. Cartanza began the trip by introducing herself and sharing a bit of backstory. She told this to us while we sat on a makeshift amphitheater of sorts made up of packages of pine shavings set up on the concrete heavy-use pad in the shadow of a barn used for storage.
The ‘amphitheatre’…
After the presentation, we were presented with Personal Protective Equipment- intended more for the chickens safety than our own- in the form of rubber booties, coveralls, and hairnets.
PPE in blue…A ‘cute’ outfit…
Looking quite stylish and now rendered unable to sneak-up on anyone, we loudly rustled and awkwardly shuffled around the other side of the barn where we saw the EcoDrum and the product of it’s ‘in-vessel composting process’.
The EcoDrum!Some compost remnants…
Opposite the barn, we could see behind up an identical structure with a manual composting drum.
The manual method…
After marveling at the innovative composting technology we walked over to the actual chicken houses themselves. We got to hear about the technology used to run the chicken houses, namely the Environmental Controller- revolutionary device that allows a single farm to take care of 37, 000 chickens. A prominent part of that technology, displayed broadly on the sides of all the houses, are the large fans to bring the temperature of the chicken house down when necessary.
Heading over to the poultry houses…Two poultry houses
Large Fans!
We also learned about the pasture areas between the houses and the advantages and disadvantages of allowing chickens to roam in the yard. Not yet in use with the young chickens were ramps, hanging water dispensers, bully boxes, ramps, and shade structures. Along with the man-made shade structures were natural shade structures of cattails running down the center.
Pasture Area
The culmination of the trip was the experience of holding baby chickens- these particular chicks were a mere two days old, still bearing the pink streaks of the tinted spray vaccine they received before arriving.
Toys in the yardCattailsSmile everyone!…
The class, joined by Ms. Cartanza, didn’t leave Dover before stopping for lunch at Chik-fil-A- paid for by the Professor. We parted ways with our host after lunch to return to the Newark campus.
Hello there…Awww…
The Newark class section would see Ms. Cartanza again, albeit remotely, for Monday’s first class guest lecture.
Graced by Ms. CARTANZA’s presence yet again, she both repeated and elaborated on some of the finer points she had made on the field trip.
Having had extensive experience in the poultry industry as a field supervisor, waking up anywhere from 4-7am and working 50 hours a week minimum, to working as an employee at Mountaire teaching people how to build two times bigger, better chicken houses, Ms. Cartanza still had a wealth of knowledge to impart.
Working as an organic poultry contract farmer, for Perdue’s organic Division Coleman, Ms. Cartanza shared some of the logistic and political issues surrounding the operation of her farm and organic poultry farms in general.
Because contract farmers compete for their contracts with different companies, growing their chicken competitively. Ms. Cartanza’s in a smaller 20acre farm, one of many strewn about the state and the peninsula, but with ¼ of the U.S. population within eight hours of her location, she maintains an edge on the competition. Delaware is not the leader in broiler production, but it does have the most broilers per square mile, with the largest organic processing plant in the country.
The poultry not only has to generate income for the company, but also pay for the capital involved in producing it- the cost of four chicken houses is much more expensive that the land they’re placed on, coming in at over $1.5mil whereas the acreage was just $20, 000. The biggest expense Ms. Cartanza said she faced after chicken feed was her mortgage and electric.
She, as a Nuffield scholar having spent time in Brazil as well as Mexico, Cornell, Ireland, & France, had not just a local Delmarva or U.S. perspective on poultry farming, but a global one.
Ms. Cartanza said a lot of the expenses and adjustments she must make around her farm don’t necessarily come from government agencies as a result of scientific study, but from the uniformed masses and their personal feelings on what makes chickens, ‘happy’.
For example, Ms. Cartanza said she has a manual composter that’s worth $12, 000 and is capable of processing 1.5 flocks, while her Canada-made EcoDrum, with it’s inverse-composting can process 5 flocks with less time and effort from the farmer. The new equipment isn’t really necessary, but it looked good to environmentalists. Chickens purportedly need 4-8hrs of darkness for melatonin production, but that may not actually help the birds at all.
Another example would be the way chicken houses have been restructured over the years. Ms. Cartanza pointed out while we were at her farm, that the window sizes on the building had to be upped due to evolving public sentiment around the amount of light chickens require to be, ‘happy’, but not necessarily healthier. The larger windows decrease the R-value of the overall house, while the transition from curtain-sided to solid-sidewall houses increase the R-value.
Outside the houses, in the pasture area, Ms. Cartanza must provide shade-areas, buffers, and enrichments that can take the form of patches of warm season grasses, like cattails and miscanthus, trees, like hybrid willows, and toys, like ‘bully boxes’ and ramps. Some of these additions, like the buffers, can help remove harmful particulates from the air, appeasing nearby neighbors, but the grasses can also add to the difficult of managing the chickens environment, creating dense growth that chickens can hide and be lost to the farmer in.
Once the 2-day-old chicks we interacted with reach three weeks old, they will have the option to go outside the chicken house. Allowing chickens to go outside makes them more at risk for predation and contamination from other birds and their droppings in the pasture that could carry Avian Flu virus. The chickens will instinctively stay inside at high noon when they are most visible from overhead, but they also seem to be most comfortable in the artificial, but regulated environment of the houses. The houses are kept at 92degrees F° via large tunnel ventilators that suck out the 8btus of heat that each chicken produces and also blows cool air through the chicken houses, protecting the birds from heat exhaustion by extracting body heat
The organic process also has restrictions on how it maintains the physical health and the environment of the chickens. Ms. Cartanza is permitted to use substances such as oregano, apple cider vinegar, copper sulfate, boric acid, and liquefied citric acid to care for the chickens.
Technology allows Ms. Cartanza to care for 37, 000 chickens more or less independently, but years ago that would have been impossible. That relative ease allows Ms. Cartanza to theoretically fed 780, 000 families from the output of her farm.
People who don’t like the poultry industry might be hard-pressed to find fault with the jobs it creates or how it helps the local economy- for every 1 jobs in poultry, 7 are created in the wider community. Labels in marketing are also used to sway public opinion- ABF or ‘Antibiotic Free’ chickens applies to any U.S. chicken, as the chickens must be cut off of any antibiotics 2 weeks before processing; NAE or ‘No Antibiotics Ever’ sounds good in theory and may appease animal welfare groups, but allowing chickens to potentially suffer for the sake of the label is debatable; and Organic chicken means a chicken is free-range and feed only GMO free feed from organic certified ground, which means additional organic corn and soybeans must be sourced from foreign countries like Argentina and Turkey, increasing the carbon footprint of the organic. The Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a coalition of vegetarians formed by Whole Foods that can threaten chain restaurants and businesses that don’t sell the type of meat they sign-off on, and other political figures with specifics leanings
Genetics, nutrition, housing, and technology have contributed to increasingly larger chickens. In 1957 chickens took 56 days to grow 2lbs,- today a modern chicken can reach 9lbs in the same amount of time. No steroids used- selective breeding makes larger chickens. Maturing in about 20 days, they are able to evolve faster.
Hello
Ms. Cartanza stresses the importance of environmental stewardship, saying poultry farmers don’t want their farms to be unhealthy or toxic places- they raise their families on the farm. They also don’t want suffering or dying birds- lost birds means a loss of money. At the sound of an alarm, a farmer may have to wake up very early, climb a grain bin, run to restore power, or confront a predator or pest- they may have as little as 20minutes to save a flock in the wake of natural disaster of power failure. She mentioned CO2stunning used in a Milford poultry plant to put chickens to sleep before processing- must be alive to process.
Naptime…
Ms. Cartanza says the next big issue facing poultry farmers after the nutrient pollution of waterways will be air quality, though the sustainably of poultry farming itself, whether from an economic or environmental standpoint will be debated as well. A big part of farming in general is the effect it has on the environment. Farmers can be easy targets, when only 2% of the U.S. voters farm and of that number most face more strict regulations on how they farm than a golf course owner or someone with a residential property applying a myriad of various chemicals to their properties.
It’s a girl!…
For Ms. Cartanza herself and her farm, her next big challenge might just be eliminating some of her power costs, one of her biggest expenses as previously mentioned, at $5, 000 a month. With a housing unit for an off-grid 20,000V power generator, Ms. Cartanza may consider going solar next. A solar power system would take 15 years to pay off an might last for 25-35years. A part of the farming process is weigh risks, and Ms. Cartanza deemed the risk too great.
Asking questions
Regardless of an individuals approach to poultry farming, or working in general, Ms. Cartanza reminds the class of the importance of maintaining humility and, ‘doing little things well’. She also reiterates the importance of vetting the news and the science and not discounting another person’s views. Even though she grows organic, she did it to follow the market and industry’s trajectory towards increasingly organic foods. Ms. Cartanza did say she will buy and eat conventional chicken and has noticed no difference in quality. She also states it is impossible to feed the world organically- in 2050, 9bilion people are projected to inhabit the world.
A few items before we leave..
Overall, I enjoyed the trip and the lecture. Some memorable events include:
One chick slated to be euthanized later by ethical/humane cervical dislocation, i.e., ‘wringing it’s neck’, possibly due to an error in the in-egg fertilization process where a needle is placed through the egg shell 3days before the chicks birth which may have caused ‘Star-gaze syndrome’, piercing the birds’ spinal cord
Holding a 2 day old chick in my bare hands that could barely stay awake
Learning that, contrary to what I had read previously, chickens are still caught by hand and live-hungèmachines were not as successful as hoped
Perdue tried for 1yr, but the results still were not as good as the 7man team that can take up to 4 6.5lb birds in each hand & can earn up to $30,00 a year catching poultry 6days a weekèEurope is often a few years ahead of the U.S. as far as tech
The Chik-fil-A lunch that followed where I saw a WW2 vet
On Monday September 9th, Georgie came to our class and spoke about the evolution of the poultry industry on Delmarva. Delmarva has 3 counties in Delaware, 8 in Maryland, and 1 in Virginia. They produce 605,000,000 birds a year. In Delmarva, there are multiple feeders, processing plants, and hatcheries that are all required for the health of the birds. They need to be comfortable and kept well so they can eventually be eaten by the people.
Throughout time, there have been many upgrades to the way birds were housed, fed, and kept taken care of. Before the modern broiler grow-out facilities, there were multiple housing facilities before that. The ways these chickens were raised is very different from the way they are now which is much better for us.
On Tuesday November 13th 2018 I attended the “Building a Sustainable Agriculture” speaker series. This speaker series was held on south campus in the Star Health Sciences complex. the guest speakers that spoke at this session included Bill Northey and Bill Couser. Bill Northey has a long history with agriculture, Bill was the secretary of Agriculture for the state of Iowa. He was also the president of the National Corn Growers Association. Today he is the Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for farm production and conservation. Bill Couser an Iowa farmer who tills thousands and thousands acres of land, raises beef cattle, and is a leader in adopting conservation practices that mitigate nutrient loading in streams and other waterways in Iowa. I thoroughly enjoyed this speaker session. I learned many interesting things about current agriculture methods used by farmers today. I also learned how far the agriculture industry has come in the United States. I also enjoyed the free Ice cream that was given out after the session.
The controversy over Genetically Modified Organisms has become a common discussion among just about everyone in the world today. With this wide discussion there has been many false accusations toward this technology, especially around human consumption. One reason these accusations have become widespread is because people believe that every crop farmers produce are genetically modified, which is again false. According to bestfoodfacts.org (approved by Dr. Kevin Folta) there is currently only 10 crops that are approved for production in the United States. These 10 crops include: corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, papaya, squash, arctic apples, and innate potatoes. The three most used in the United States are corn, soybeans, and cotton because of the great demand for these commodities.
The demand for these commodities is one of the biggest reasons that GMOs were invented and with the demand ever growing they will continue to emerge. However people must understand the science behind these products and all the research that is done before a crop is approved because farmers really are trying to produce what’s best for the consumer because in fact farmers are consuming these products as well. This is what brings up the topic of agvocacy because in order for the misconceptions of GMOs to clear up there has to be a push to clarify them with scientific facts, which is something I believe is going to become bigger in bigger in everyday life.
In the beginning of the video Mark Lynas went before the Oxford Farming Conference in January, 2013 to apologize for his association with anti-GMO movements. He originally believed that GMO’s were harmful and only helped companies make more money. Therefore he started a campaign, that later became very successful, to ban GMO’s in Europe, India, Africa and in Asia. However, once Mr. Lynas took the time to actually learn the science behind GMO’s he realized that they were beneficial and as he mentioned not harmful, as there are no documented cases. He learned that with the growing rate of today’s society there would never be enough land to use for agricultural purposes to feed everyone. This is where GMO’s come in by allowing the farmer to use them, it increases the yield of products on the same amount of land previously used. I support the use of GMO’s in agriculture today.
During a 2013 conference on farming Mark Lynas spoke about GMOs. Mark Lynas originally was against GMOs and was publicly speaking against them. He thought they were run by large corporations and only benefited the rich. Mark said that this was not the case and that many small and local farmers benefited from GMOs. Mark also said that one of the reasons he did not support GMOs was because he thought they used more pesticides. He later found out that this was also not the case and genetically modified agriculture used less pesticides than non-modified types of agriculture. He has now switched his view points on this matter. He has done his research and truly believes that GMOs will play a crucial role in feeding a rapidly increasing human population. Mark stated that by 2050 there would be around 9.5 billion people on the earth and that we would have to increase our current agriculture production by over 100%. He also said that one of common myths people believe for why the human population is growing is because developing and poor nations are having a lot of babies. He went on to say that this not entirely true. The main reason the human population is rapidly growing is due to the increase in medical care. Today more and more kids are making past childhood and reproducing. Mark said that there are a around 2 billion children around the world who will be responsible for the 9.5 billion human population. Overall I found this video insightful and shining light on some myths that I thought were true.
Mark Lynas helped find an anti-GMO campaign back in 1995. He felt that GMO’s would act as pollution and led to too much technological power because we were “mixing species.” There was also a stigma of ‘mad scientist’ when referring to scientists interested in gene splicing was also being used towards science interested in GMO crops. Lynas is known for a dramatic change in beliefs. Know for a strong stance against GMOs to actively promoting and educating the public about GMOs and their benefits. Lynas helped lead a anti-GMO campaign that was led nations in Europe, Africa, and other parts of the world to ban GMOs. He later then admitted that this was a major mistake. He did not understand the science behind creating GMOs and its effects on crops and humans. His campaign was ran off of fears not backed by science. Lynas now believes that GMOs is the answer to feed a estimated population of 9.5 billion in 2050 on the same amount of land we used today. GMO crops benefit farmers, consumers, and the ecosystem. GMO crops are effective and can produce higher yields of produce on less land that is typically needed for high yields. GMOs can reduce or eliminate crop susceptibility to disease, pests and environmental conditions.
Moral of Mark Lynas : due diligence – consider all sides before making a decision, make decisions off of information and not fears.
My view on GMOs is a positive one. GMOs provide many benefits to people and the ecosystem. GMOs allow crops to grow with less water and fertilizer application. This results in in less pollution of waterways from fertilizer runoff. Farmers also get an increased yield on the same amount of acres. This allows forest lands to be protected and not used for food production. GMOs allow for a lower cost of production and this can be helpful in developing countries which would allow them to be self sustainable.
Mark Lynas helped find an anti-GMO campaign back in 1995. He felt that GMO’s would act as pollution and led to too much technological power because we were “mixing species.” There was also a stigma of ‘mad scientist’ when referring to scientists interested in gene splicing was also being used towards science interested in GMO crops. Lynas is known for a dramatic change in beliefs. Know for a strong stance against GMOs to actively promoting and educating the public about GMOs and their benefits. Lynas helped lead a anti-GMO campaign that was led nations in Europe, Africa, and other parts of the world to ban GMOs. He later then admitted that this was a major mistake. He did not understand the science behind creating GMOs and its effects on crops and humans. His campaign was ran off of fears not backed by science. Lynas now believes that GMOs is the answer to feed a estimated population of 9.5 billion in 2050 on the same amount of land we used today. GMO crops benefit farmers, consumers, and the ecosystem. GMO crops are effective and can produce higher yields of produce on less land that is typically needed for high yields. GMOs can reduce or eliminate crop susceptibility to disease, pests and environmental conditions.
Moral of Mark Lynas : due diligence – consider all sides before making a decision, make decisions off of information and not fears.
My view on GMOs is a positive one. GMOs provide many benefits to people and the ecosystem. GMOs allow crops to grow with less water and fertilizer application. This results in in less pollution of waterways from fertilizer runoff. Farmers also get an increased yield on the same amount of acres. This allows forest lands to be protected and not used for food production. GMOs allow for a lower cost of production and this can be helpful in developing countries which would allow them to be self sustainable.
Mark Lynas is known for change from a strong stance against GMOs to actively promoting them and educating the public about the benefits of GMOs. Lynas and his anti-GMO campaign was one of the major factors that lead many nations in Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world to ban GMOs in the crops that they grew and imported. He admitted that this was a major mistake that he made due to the success of the movement. He was concerned with what he thought scientists were doing when they were working on GMOs despite his fears being false. He did not understand the science behind creating GMOs and its effects on crops so he rose in opposition to science to ban them.
Mark Lynas began to support GMOs as it was much more precise and accurate than conventional methods of breeding. The population of the world will rise to over 9.5 billion people in 2050 and they will have to fed with the same amount of land that we use today. This means that we have to produce far more crops and food without gaining more land to grow them on. Mark Lynas believes the answer to feed the growing population is to embrace GMOs as it will help to produce more food with the same amount of land.
GMOs are one of the most effective methods for producing more food with the same amount of land as it increases crop yields. It can eliminate risks to crops such as disease and pests by building resistance to them so we lose less crop before it is harvested. Crops can also be modified to be higher quality and to produce higher yields which will produce more food for more people.
The misconception of genetics and the important role they play in everyones life is huge. In Mark Lynas’s video I had the chance to view both sides of the argument “are GMO’s bad” which helps me understand the reason people tend to have different opinions. Mark was originally against genetically modified organisms because he did not know the actual science about them at first. But once Mark learned how important this technology is he quickly changed views. With the world growing at a rapid place Mark realized that there would be no way to feed everyone if farmers were not growing GMO crops, which was truly the reason Mark changed sides.
As a 4th generation farm boy I understand the importance of this technology and 100% support the use of GMO’s. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but lets be honest there isn’t any proof that GMO’s are harmful to humans and as a matter of fact their good for us because their supporting our ever growing population. I thought Mark’s video was a good video to kind of open my eyes to other ideas but also teach me that people do not like GMO’s because they are ignorant to the subject and just need to be taught the facts just like Mark had to.
CRISPR/Cas9 is a system that has just recently been discovered around the early 2000s and is taking the science world by surprise. This system is much more accurate compared to early gene editing systems, which makes it the new technique scientist are using. The way this system works is by targeting a specific genome and altering it. While you may think it sounds simple you might be surprised because quite frankly working with DNA sequences is very complex and hard. When looking further into the process there are two molecules used one being the Cas9 and the other being RNA. Now when a scientist picks out what DNA sequence they want to cut out in order to alter the genes they first need Cas9. This molecule is an enzyme that is inserted into the DNA sequence and cuts at a specific location in order to alter the DNA sequence where the scientist pick without harming the whole gene. Though in order for the enzyme to cut out the specific location it needs guide RNA to show it the right path. That means that the RNA is responsible for leading Cas9 to an exact spot in the DNA sequence and then performs the cut. Once the cut is made the cell recognizes the change in the DNA and tries to repair itself. However before the cell can repair itself the scientist uses a DNA repairing machine to introduce changes which will then become part of the gene. Once this process is complete the gene has the desirable trait the scientist picked out and now the process is done.
85% of Iowa’s land mass is used for agriculture! There are 87,500 farmers in Iowa that till 30.5 million acres a year. Compared to Delaware farmers where they till only 490,000 acres. 92% of Iowa’s cash farm income comes from corn, soybean, pork and beef production. Iowa is ranked first in corn, soybean, pork and egg production. For example, Iowa farmers harvest 13.1 million acres of corn, with a state average of 203 bushels per acre.
What makes Iowa so optimal for agriculture?
Iowa has very fertile soil with a high cation exchange capacity of 10-15. Iowa gets 24 to 36 inches of rain a year which is good because Iowa’s soil moisture capacity is also key to its fertility. The soil’s ability to retain the rain eliminates the need for an irrigation system, thus making production costs lower.
California
California is number one in agriculture sales, with an annual $47 billion dollars. California ranks first in nine different commodities that include- milk/cream, almonds, grapes, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, flowers/foliage, walnuts, and hay. California has 77,500 farms with over 25 million acres. An average farm size is 329 acres but some range to 50,000 acres. California is ranked the 10th largest general economy in the world. This means California generates a larger gross domestic product than countries such as Mexico and Canada.
How does California succeed?
Water and labor. Water is what California agriculture is all about. Water in California is very limited, their water source is from the snow caps of the mountains that flow through aqueducts and run through a filter which then is distributed throughout California. Water and the ideal low humidity in California makes it perfect to grow more fruit and vegetables that everyone eats on a daily basis. Also, 95% of our tomato products come from California. This volume of production is ideal because 26% of its production is exported.
