FACTS about Modern U.S. Agriculture

As I started my blog entry this week I wanted to continue to try and correct some of the misinformation floating out there about farming. The more I wrote I realized I was just ranting about how uninformed many people are about modern agriculture, I began to realize what a bad direction I was taking, why should they be educated? Less than 2% of the population now lives on a farm, well over ½ of our population lives in urban areas, and vast numbers of people have never set foot on a farm. Ranting against people that haven’t had an opportunity to learn is going to accomplish nothing.

What I realized I need to do is lay out of some indisputable facts, then explain why the misinformation that is circulating is dangerous in light of these facts. Over the next few weeks I will take a topic each week that I believe is misrepresented and try to set the record straight as I see it and based on the information I have.

I realize that a lot of people who are spreading this false information are truly good intentioned, simply misinformed. While I do wish they would take the time to learn and consider the full impact of their actions before pursuing legislative approach the best thing I can do is be a source of accurate information.

It is very hard for me not to jump into these topics all at once but over the next couple weeks I will have a blog entry or two about:

• Organic Crop Productions
  
• Genetically Modified Crops
• Farm Subsidies
• Fertilizers & Chemicals

For now lets start with a few basic facts:

Fact 1: There are more people alive on the planet at this moment than there have been people who have passed since the earth’s existence.

Fact 2: It took 13,000 years for earths population to reach 1 billion people, now we are adding one billion people every 12 years!

Fact 3: We need to grow more food (calories) in the next 40 years than has been grown in the history of man.

Fact 4: There are over 1 billion people on this planet that live on less than $1 a day!


As I discuss my thoughts on the topics above in the next few entries keep these numbers in mind.

Finally, while there are many suggestions out there on how we should be farming, I will say any of them that do not support the production required for feeding of the number of people, including the least fortunate, are personally unacceptable to me.