Transcript Did You Know?

Did You Know?
• More than 35% of the
Earth’s surface is used,
at least indirectly, for
harvesting food and
other materials.
Did You Know?
• Globally, about 60% of
food is produced using
rainwater, 40% using
irrigation.
Did You Know?
• In one day, a cow
consumes 35 gallons of
water, 20 pounds of
grain, and 35 pounds of
hay and silage.
• In one day, a cow
produces 5.4 gallons of
milk or 2.0 pounds of
butter or 4.6 pounds of
cheese.
Did You Know?
• The United States is the
world’s second-largest
orange producer after
Brazil. Together, the
two countries account
for over half of world
production.
Did You Know?
• Cattle defecate 12-18
times per day and
urinate 7-11 times per
day.
Did You Know?
• One acre of corn gives
off 4,000 gallons of
water each day through
evaporation.
Did You Know?
• More than 75 million
tons of soil are blown
or washed into the
oceans each year.
Did You Know?
• Earthworms can
completely mix the top
6 inches of a humid
grassland soil—in 10 to
20 years.
Did You Know?
• The “permanence” of
the ice cream industry
was established during
World War II as
manufacturers geared
up production for
American servicemen.
• But ice cream had been
in the United States for
a long time; the product
was produced during
another war—the
American Revolution.
Did You Know?
•
The term “snap beans”
refers to the crackling
sound made when fresh
beans are broken in two.
Once widely known as
string beans because of
their stringy pods, over
the past century the tough
pod strings have been
bred out of most of
today’s popular varieties.
Did You Know?
• Cattle usually graze for
4-9 hours a day.
• Sheep and goats
usually graze for 9-11
hours a day.
Did You Know?
• During the pre-1950
period, farmers viewed
poultry raising as a way
either to produce eggs
or to put spilled grain,
grass, and insects
around the farm yard
to productive use.
Did You Know?
• Cattle slaughter plants
usually specialize in one
of two types of cattle.
Plants specialize because
the animals have
different shapes that
require different settings
for slaughter line
equipment, and because
the animals provide
different meat products.
Did You Know?
• The first application of
modern scientific methods to
plant reproduction is credited
to Gregor Mendel in the mid19th century. Mendel’s
research focused on the
identification of particular
traits in garden peas, and the
ways in which such traits were
inherited by successive
generations.
Did You Know?
• On the average, rainfall
adds about 5 pounds of
nitrogen per acre per
year.
Did You Know?
• At the turn of the 20th
century, about 38
percent of the labor
force worked on farms.
By the end of the
century, that figure was
less than 3 percent.
Did You Know?
• Though botanically a
fruit, in 1893 the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled the
tomato was a vegetable.
The import tax on
vegetables (not on fruits)
protected U.S. tomato
growers from foreign
markets.
Did You Know?
• In a living tree, the
heartwood is entirely
dead and only a
comparatively few
sapwood cells are alive.
Therefore, most wood is
dead when cut,
regardless of whether the
tree itself is living.
Did You Know?
• Approximately 45% of
the U.S. land area is
used for agricultural
purposes, with 472
million acres in
cropland and 587
million acres in range
or pasture.
Did You Know?
• America’s forests cover
747 million acres.
Did You Know?
• On average, it takes one
pound of oranges to
make one 8-ounce glass
of single-strength orange
juice. Juice consumption
took off in the mid-1940s
with the introduction of
frozen concentrated
orange juice.
Did You Know?
• About half the U.S. beef
cow inventory is on
rangeland and pastures
between the
Mississippi River and
the Rocky Mountains.
Did You Know?
• Early 20th century
agriculture was labor
intensive, and it took
place on a large number
of small, diversified farms
in rural areas where
more than half the U.S.
population lived.
• They employed close to
half the U.S. workforce,
along with 22 million
work animals, and
produced an average of
five different
commodities.
Did You Know?
• Demand for wool
declined after World
War II due to the
reduction in use by
military service
personnel.
Did You Know?
• The agricultural sector
of the 21st century is
concentrated on a
small number of large,
specialized farms in
rural areas where less
than a fourth of the
U.S. population lives.
• These highly productive
and mechanized farms
employ a tiny share of
U.S. workers and use 5
million tractors in place
of the horses and mules
of earlier days.
Did You Know?
• The years 1866-1880
were the era of the
cattle drives from Texas
to Missouri and Kansas
stockyards.
Did You Know?
• Before 1898,
hardwoods were
graded by individual
mills for local markets.
Did You Know?
• The Great Plains has
478 counties in 11
states, about one-fifth
of all U.S. land area
outside of Alaska.
Did You Know?
• Steers and heifers are fed a concentrated diet
of corn rations before slaughter, producing a
more marbled cut of beef that is preferred for
taste. Cows, fed on grass and forage, produce
leaner meat that is usually mixed with
trimmings from steer and heifer carcasses to
produce ground beef.
Did You Know?
• Native to Mexico and
South America,
poinsettias were named
after the U.S.
ambassador to Mexico—
Joel Poinsett—who
introduced the plant in
the U.S. in 1825.
Did You Know?
• Milk is produced in all
50 states.
Did You Know?
• Corn production uses
over 25% of the
nation’s cropland and
more than 40% of the
commercial fertilizer
applied to crops.
Did You Know?
• According to the
National Resources
Inventory, on average,
666,000 acres of prime
farmland are converted
each year to nonagricultural uses—more
than 70 acres per hour
each day.
Did You Know?
• “Uncle Sam” is modeled
after Sam Wilson, a
meatpacker from Troy,
New York. During the
War of 1812, the meat he
shipped to the
government was
stamped “U.S. Beef.”
Soldiers began to call it
Uncle Sam’s beef.
Did You Know?
• One inch of rain yields
27,000 gallons of water
per acre.
Did You Know?
• The eggshell and
membranes under it
provide a barrier that
limits the ability of
organisms to enter the
egg. The shell surface has
from 7,000-17,000 tiny
pores that permit
moisture and carbon
dioxide to move out and
air to move in.
Did You Know?
• Sweet corn is actually a
genetic mutation of field
corn and was reportedly
first grown in
Pennsylvania in the mid1700s. The natural
mutation in sweet corn
causes the kernel to store
more sugars than field
corn.
Did You Know?
• Plants contain openings
that permit air to enter
and water vapor to leave.
These openings are
called stomata. The word
stoma comes from the
Greek word meaning
“mouth.”
Did You Know?
• While China’s
population is more
than four times that of
the United States, the
U.S. has about onethird more cropland
than China.
Did You Know?
• There are more than
22,000 different soils
identified and mapped
in the United States.
Some states recognize
more than 1,000
different kinds of soil.
Did You Know?
• Domestic broiler
consumption in the U.S.
is predominantly of white
meat. In contrast, dark
meat—drums, thighs,
deboned leg meat, whole
legs, and leg quarters—is
preferred by consumers
in most foreign markets,
including Mexico.
Did You Know?
• Today’s forest land area
amounts to about 70%
of the area that was
forested in 1630.
• More than 75% of the
net conversion to other
uses occurred in the
19th century.
Did You Know?
• Corn starch is used by
the paper industry as a
coating on paper and
by the construction
material industry as a
component in the
manufacture of
wallboard.
Did You Know?
• The bulk of U.S. hog
production is located in
the Corn Belt, near
abundant feed
supplies.
Did You Know?
• All domesticated cattle have a common ancestor: the
wild Aurochs cattle, which originated in Asia.
Unfortunately their wild, aggressive temperament
made them hard to domesticate. But with enough
meat on them to feed a village for weeks, they
became a trophy to hunt. Eventually, though, they
were hunted to extinction: The last true Aurochs cow
is believed to have been killed by poachers in Poland
in 1627.
Did You Know?
• Spanish explorers
introduced the tomato
to Europe in the 1600s.
Northern Europeans
suspected the “wolf
peach” was poisonous
and only grew it for
decoration.
Did You Know?
• Production of saliva in a mature ruminant can exceed
47.5 gallons per day when cows chew six to eight
hours per day.
Did You Know?
• The Curriculum and
Instructional Materials
Center (CIMC) has
produced high-quality,
industry-approved
curriculum since 1967.
• Visit the CIMC today at
www.okcimc.com.