• Ag retailers supply tools to farmers and look out for their local communities. They play a major role in soil and water resource management. Proper soil stewardship keeps soil in place and productive. Good farming practices help keep surface and ground water supplies clean and clear.
• Farming is more than food.
Corn can be made into: plastics, cooking oil, diapers, sweetener, road de-icer, packing materials and human & livestock feed.
Soybeans: cooking oil, printers ink, paint and human & livestock feed.
Cotton: adhesive bandages, paint, paper, cooking oil.
Rice: starches, papers, human & livestock feed.
• Today, 99 percent of U.S. farms are owned by individuals, family partnerships or corporations with fewer than 10 stockholders. Only four-tenths of one percent of farms are owned by non-family corporations.
• Every agricultural chemical made in the U.S. undergoes thorough safety, health and environmental testing and must also meet the standards of at least one other developed country before it can be sold for use abroad.
• Farmers and ranchers provide food and habitat for 75 percent of the nation’s wildlife.
• Farmers use conservation tillage practices on 109.7 million acres. That’s 37 percent of the 294.6 million acres planted last year, up 6 percent from 1996.
• Dose makes the poison. Small amounts of chlorine added to water make our water safe from disease or bacteria. However, one swallow of pure chlorine could be fatal.
• From 1987 to 1992, 1.4 million acres of prime U.S. farmland were converted to some other use (e.g. forest land and conservation purposes). That equals enough football fields laid end to end to circle the earth 3.5 times.
• Agriculture is the nation’s largest employer, with more than 22 million people working in some phase– from growing food and fiber, to selling it at the supermarket.
• “Today’s environmental activists worry about the number of spiders and weeds preserved in an acre of monoculture corn, but they give precious little credit for the billions of wild organisms thriving on the two acres which didn’t have to be plowed because of the high yields in that cornfield!”-Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues of the Hudson Institute.
• Agriculture combines the knowledge of living things with the knowledge of soils and the atmosphere. Much of that knowledge comes from hands-on experience. But many farmers and ag retailers have college diplomas, graduate degrees and special training.
• The risk of developing cancer from consuming all major pesticides (through minute residues in food) in a typical diet is 100 times less than the risk from consuming natural carcinogens in raw mushrooms.
• Industry certification programs, such as the Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) program, set high standards for ag retailers and consultants who want to keep their professional business standards at levels higher than those required by state and federal laws.
• Integrated Pest Management (IPM) employs both natural biological controls and the judicious use of pesticides.
• During the past 50 years, application rates for pesticides and fertilizers on farm land have decreased from pounds per acre to grams per acre.
• By improving efficiency, farmers and ag retailers now have to make fewer applications of pesticides to protect crops from damaging pests.
• Technology is the major force behind the dramatic increase in the productivity of the American farmer. As never before, U.S. agriculture is a high-tech business, including everything from home computers and satellite communication systems to biotechnology.
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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