• Of the about 300 million acres farmed in the U.S. in 1996, 103.8 million acres were using some form of conservation tillage.
• According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of the 141,000 acres of wetlands lost in the U.S. in 1995, commercial development accounted for 89,000 acres.
• Farmers and ranchers have helped restore an average net gain of 69,000 acres of wetlands during each of the past 10 years.
• Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices have reduced insecticide use by 50 percent on major crops.
• Crop protection chemical use on corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum was down 24 percent between 1982 and 1992.
• The erosion rate by water on U.S. croplands has been reduced by 24 percent during the past 10 years.
• Crop residue management plans are now used on 62 percent of the nation’s cropland.
• No-till soybean acreage rose dramatically from 2.2 million acres in 1989 to 16.2 million acres in 1996.
• Iowa State University research found that 10-foot-wide buffer strips remove 70 percent of the upland sediment from runoff, and that 48 percent of the herbicide runoff from rain is filtered out on relatively small slopes and small areas.
• The Conservation Reserve Program helped to reduce erosion on thousands of archeological sites.
• It takes almost six times the energy contained in food to actually produce it.
• Between 1990 and 1995, the rates of new cases for all cancers decreased an average of .7 percent per year. The largest decreases were seen in lung cancer.
• According to the National Cancer Institute director, Richard Klausner, one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of cancer is to consumer more fruits and vegetables.
• The farmer’s share of a dollar spent on food is shrinking. Farmers keep only about $.21 of every buck Americans spend on food. Ten years ealier, they got $.27. Twenty years ago...$.36. In 1950...$.41.
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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