• Productivity per man-hour in agriculture has been increasing about twice as fast as the rate of productivity per man-hour in manufacturing.
• In India, where 65 percent of the people are farmers, more than half the income goes for food. In Russia, 39 percent of the people are farmers, and one-third of income goes for food. In the U.S., less than 11 percent of our income goes for food and only about 2 percent of our population works on the farm.
• American farmers and ranchers produce 16 percent of the world’s food on just 7 percent of the world’s land.
• Even with the use of agrichemicals, insects world-wide still destroy enough stored grain to feed half the population of Africa.
• “There’s nothing wrong with pesticides as long as they’re used with restraint. We’ve got so many millions of people to feed, and it just can’t be done without them.”-Julia Child
• Today, 99.9 percent of all pesticides we eat are naturally occurring and are not produced by man.
• In 1988, Congress ordered all pesticides approved for use before 1984 to be re-evaluated and re-registered by Environmental Protection Agency. This ensures that all pesticides on the market have gone through rigorous testing and have been approved by EPA.
• Farmers grow food and fiber that they and their families will consume, in soil on which their children play. So, farmers have a vested interest in using crop protection chemicals and fertilizers properly.
• Available farm land is decreasing daily. By 2025, there will be 0.49 acres of farm land per person and by 2050, there will be 0.37 acres of farm land per person.
• Erosion control practices employed today include crop rotation and residue management. Both can provide food and habitat for life—ranging from soil microbes to mammals—and can reduce the need for some pesticides.
• Examples of water-quality management techniques farmers implement are: reduction of soil erosion, manure management, soil testing and fertilization by prescription, application of nitrogen in spring and summer rather than only in the fall and the building of field borders, buffer strips and pond or riverside runoff controls.
• Wildlife is an important asset to rural America. Properly managed farms can provide food and shelter for thousands of species.
• In the United States, 521 counties (16 percent of the total counties in the country) depend on farming as their principal source of income.
• One acre of land used for fruit and vegetable crops can produce 45,500 pounds of strawberries.
• There are 145,156 farms operated by women in the United States.
• Only 20 percent of the body’s exposure to nitrates comes from food.
• Today only about 2 percent the American population produces raw agricultural food products, compared to 20 percent in 1930.
• One of the biggest benefits of biotechnology is its ability to triple the amount of food produced without taking up any more land.
• Largely due to conservation tillage made possible by herbicides, soil erosion decreased by 25 percent from 1982 to 1992, reducing sediment in rivers and lakes, and preserving the productivity of farmland.
• If yields returned to levels of the 1950’s in absence of modern agricultural chemicals, 148 million more acres of land would have to be converted from present uses (wildlife habitat) to agriculture to maintain current production levels.
• Each year, as much as 45 percent of the world’s crops are lost to damage or spoilage.
• South Korea is in the midst of a pizza craze. In 1993, they imported only 5 tons of mozzarella. In 1997, they imported nearly 10,000 tons of mozzarella!
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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