18 Questions About Farming Answered

People in developed countries such as the United States eat food that comes from all over the world. Such countries have the wealth to buy food products that are brought by plane or ship from far away. A wide variety of canned and packaged foods are available from every corner of the globe. And even fresh foods such as fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats can now be sped across oceans in refrigerated boats. So foods that were once rare treats are now available at nearly every time of the year, arriving from places with different climates and seasons. That means that the asparagus and strawberries you eat may be grown nearby—or halfway across the world! Today, when you look in your cupboards, it can be like taking a trip around the world: you will see tea from India, coffee from Brazil, olive oil from Italy, and much more. In the past, people ate only the food that they could produce on their farms or find at their local markets.

In the 1700s, English farmers settled in New England villages; Dutch, German, Swedish, Scotch-Irish, and English farmers settled on Middle Colony farmsteads; English and French farmers settled on plantations in tidewater and on isolated Southern Colony farmsteads in Piedmont; Spanish immigrants, mostly indentured servants, settled the Southwest and California. Farmers endured a rough pioneer life while adapting to their new environments, and by the 1800s small family farms grew and sold crops such as wheat, cotton, corn, and rice. But the work was hard and slow-going: in 1830, it took 250 to 300 hours of labor using very basic tools to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat. The growth of farming brought many laborsaving devices to 19th- and early 20th-century farm life, including reaping and threshing machines, which replaced work done by hand. Today, with modern methods of agriculture that include complex machinery, scientific breeding, and chemical pesticides, farms require far fewer workers.

Before the Industrial Revolution (which began in the 1800s in the United States), most people lived and worked on farms. In 1935, there were 6.8 million farms in the United States, and the average farmer produced enough food each year to feed about 20 people. By 2002, the number of farms had dropped to about 2.1 million, yet the average U.S. farmer produced enough food to feed almost 130 people. The average size of a farm in 1935 was smaller than it is today, about 155 acres (63 hectares) compared to about 467 acres (189 hectares) today.

California produces the most agriculture (animal and plant foods) for the United States, contributing about two-thirds of the country’s fruits, nuts, berries, and melons. Almost one-quarter of the state’s land—about 27.7 million acres (11.2 million hectares)—is dedicated to farming. Other states that grow a large percent of the country’s food include Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Arkansas. Texas, for example, produces the most cattle; Iowa raises the most hogs and grows the most corn; and North Dakota grows the most wheat. Arkansas is the state with the largest poultry production.

The combine harvester saves the farmers time and labor. Before modern machinery, harvesting crops was a painstaking process. Gathering and removing mature plants from the field had to be done by hand. Farm workers used sharp-bladed, long-handled scythes and curved sickles to cut down cereal crops such as wheat. Even the fastest reaper could only clear about a third of an acre a day. Because rain could ruin harvested wheat, workers called sheaf-makers quickly tied it into bundles, so that it could be safely stored if the weather turned stormy. During the long winter months, farm workers used jointed wooden tools called flails to thresh or beat the dried wheat in order to separate its edible grain seeds from its stalks. But in 1786 a machine that threshed wheat by rubbing it between rollers was invented, replacing human threshers. And around 1840 a reaping machine—its revolving wheel pressed grain stalks against a sharp blade that cut them down—replaced human harvesters. Today, farm machines called combine harvesters do this work in much the same way. These machines, which are loaded with technology, are very efficient and combine all three jobs of cutting, collecting, and threshing a crop.

There are reports that primitive milking machines were used around 300 BCE by the ancient Egyptians, who used hollow wheat stems inserted in the teats to milk cows. But hand milking was popular in the United States until about the 1860s, when American inventors began finding more efficient ways to milk cows. In 1860, Lee Colvin invented the first hand-held pump device. In 1879, Anna Baldwin patented a milking machine that used a large rubber cup connected to the cow’s udder and to a pump lever and bucket. Working the pump lever pulled the milk out of the udder and into the bucket. Baldwin’s was one of the earliest American patents, but it was not successful. Her invention, like others of the time, created a continuous suction on the udder, damaging the cow’s fragile mammary tissue and causing the cow to kick. These ideas laid the groundwork for the successful milking machines that started to appear in later decades, and today’s highly automated milking machines use vacuum suction to gather milk.

A seed drill was a device that allowed farmers to plant seeds in the soil and then cover them up. The instrument, created in 1701 by the English farmer Jethro Tull, allowed farmers to sow seeds in well-spaced rows at specific depths at a specific rate. Before this, farmers cast seeds to the ground in a haphazard fashion by hand, allowing them to grow where they landed (called “broadcasting”). The seed drill allowed farmers more control over their crops and less waste, and it was one of Tull’s several inventions, which included the horse-drawn hoe and an improved plough. Seed drills are still in use today, although they are much more sophisticated mechanisms.

Windmills, mechanisms that look like giant pinwheels, have been used to generate power and grind wheat since ancient times. American colonists used windmills to power machinery that could process what they grew on their farms, grinding wheat into flour and corn into cornmeal. Windmills also powered tools to saw wood and make typical household items, such as oil, paper, spices, chalk, and pottery. Through the 1920s, Americans used small windmills to generate electricity in rural areas. When power lines began to transport electricity to these areas in the 1930s, local windmills were used less and less. When the oil shortages of the 1970s created an interest in alternative energy sources, windmills became fashionable again, especially in states such as California whose governments encouraged renewable energy sources.

Today, clusters of giant windmills—more precisely called wind turbines, with blades reaching 200 feet (61 meters) long—sit atop windy hillsides in great numbers to make electricity. The force of the wind pushes the slanted blades, which causes them to rotate because they are bound by a shaft. This spinning shaft runs an electrical generator, which creates power. They are sometimes called wind power plants or wind farms. U.S. states with significant levels of wind production are California, Texas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma.

Today, the huge, airy farm structures we know as barns are used mostly to store modern farm machinery and house farm animals. But before modern farming, they had a greater number of important uses. Before the invention of threshing machines (which separate cereal grains such as wheat from their stalks), the grain harvest had to be stored in barns, where it would await threshing or pounding by hand during winter months. The structures had to be large and drafty for the process of winnowing, which separated straw dust from the grains after threshing.

Before farmers began to raise special crops to feed their livestock during the winter, they used hay, which is dried grass (grown wild or taken from the stalks of cereal crops). Huge amounts—enough to last several months—had to be stored away. Hay was usually kept in barn lofts located above the main floor, where farm animals spent the winter. This high storage place allowed air to circulate around the hay, keeping it from rotting. It was convenient, too, because hay could be pulled down as needed to feed the livestock.

Because farmers had to store their harvest crops in barns, they cut entrance holes near their roofs, inviting barn owls to make nests there. The birds would hunt the rats and mice that liked to feed on the grain.

The tall, cylinder-shaped farm structures known as silos are used to store silage, which is animal feed. Silage is moist feed made from green crops that ferment when stored in an airtight place. This fermentation process preserves the feed, which is used along with or instead of hay (dried grasses) to feed livestock (horses, cattle, sheep) during the winter when they cannot feed in green pastures. Silage gives farm animals needed nutrients. Before farmers started to raise food crops to feed their livestock (during the 18th century), they had to kill most of their animals when winter approached, because grass in pasturelands stopped growing and the animals faced starvation. But herds of livestock could be kept year-round once farmers began to grow crops for winter feed. Root crops like turnips, as well as leafy crops, were sometimes used. Today, corn is the crop most often used for silage.

Farmers and governments use chemical pesticides to protect crops from insect pests, weeds, and fungal diseases while they are growing. They also spray crops with pesticides to prevent rats, mice, and insects from contaminating foods while they are being stored. While these actions are meant to benefit human health and bring a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to the supermarket, they can also harm people, wildlife, and the environment. This is why there are strict controls in place over their sale and use.

While most large farms today use chemicals to control weeds and insects and to produce increased amounts of vegetables, milk, or eggs, some farmers have chosen to run their farms without chemicals. Organic farmers believe that the chemicals many farmers use can be damaging to the environment and to the people that eat the food grown on such farms. They feel that natural fertilizers and pest-control methods are just as effective and far healthier.

A British farmer and scientist named Albert Howard began the practice of organic farming as an alternative to modern chemical-based methods in the 1930s. His ideas have spread all over the world, taking hold in the United States in the late 1940s. A basic principle of organic farming is to focus on keeping the soil rich with nutrients by feeding it natural fertilizers such as cow manure. Such fertile soil can help create stronger plants that are better able to resist disease and insects. Organic farmers also prevent insect damage by putting up insect traps or by bringing in beneficial insects that feed on the harmful ones that are causing a problem. In extreme cases, they need to use pesticides, but to continue being certified as organic farmers in the United States, such farmers need to use botanical pesticides (those that are made from plants) rather than synthetic chemicals.

Yes. Organic farmers also try to do more tasks using human power rather than vehicles powered by fossil fuels, thereby using less fuel and cutting down on pollution. Organic farms that raise livestock such as dairy cows or chickens feed the animals with natural food, avoiding pollution-causing chemicals and growth hormones that make cows produce more milk and chickens produce more eggs. Some organic farmers also allow their animals to roam in a large area (such animals are described as “free range”) rather than keeping them in small, climate-controlled pens for their entire lives.

Fish farms are businesses that produce a limited number of fish for sale in restaurants and supermarkets. The business is called aquaculture, which includes the farming of fish, shrimp, shellfish, and seaweed. Fish can be grown in natural waters—such as ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams—or artificial environments, including tanks, pools, and special cages. Fish species such as salmon, catfish, rainbow trout, tilapia, and cod are grown in fish farms. Fish farms around the world supply almost half of the world’s total food fish supply. The United States has fish farms in California, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and along the southeastern U.S. coast. However, it imports about 80 percent of its seafood—and half of these imports come from fish farms in Asia and Latin America.

Yes. In 1997 a team of scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first clone (identical copy) of an adult mammal. The process used to create Dolly, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, began with an egg cell from one sheep. The scientists destroyed that egg cell’s nucleus and then injected the nucleus from the cell of another sheep into the egg cell. With a little encouragement from electronic stimulation, the donated nucleus fused with the egg cell, and the new cell began to divide. The cluster of cells was then implanted into the uterus of the sheep that had provided the egg cell, and five months later Dolly was born—an exact replica not of the sheep that had carried her in the womb but of the sheep that had supplied the nucleus. While cloning mammals is controversial, some scientists argue that cloning farm animals has advantages to livestock farmers, who could use the technology to breed only high-quality animals that produce the most milk or the finest wool.

A cow, like all mammals, produces milk to feed its young. If its calf nurses regularly, the mother cow’s mammary glands will produce enough milk to give the baby animal all the food it needs. Gradually a calf will nurse less as grass and other feed makes up more of its diet. A cow, in turn, will produce less milk until it is no longer needed.

But by milking the cows regularly—two or three times a day—dairy farmers can cause the cows to continue producing milk. Certain breeds of cows are particularly good at milk-making, producing 18 to 27 pints (around 2 to 3 gallons, or 10 to 15 liters) each day. A cow’s large, round udder, located on its underside, has four nipples, or teats, that are squeezed to release stored milk. While once done by hand, milking is done on modern dairy farms by machines with suction hoses, which do the job more quickly and cheaply. Trucks collect milk from farms and take it to processing plants where it is pasteurized (made germ-free) and used to make dairy products such as cheese, butter, and ice cream.

In order to produce four or more gallons of milk each day, dairy cows have to eat a lot. Producing milk requires additional calories in the form of extra food. A large dairy cow may eat up to 150 pounds (about 68 kilograms) of grass each day, and that takes time.

Cows have special stomachs, too, that make eating a slow process. Instead of having one chamber like a human’s, a cow’s stomach has four chambers. When a cow takes a bite of grass it swallows it right away without chewing it. The food goes into the first chamber of its stomach, called the rumen (animals that have such stomachs are called ruminants), where it mixes with fluid to form a soft mass. The mushy grass is regurgitated or brought back up again later, when the cow is resting. This “cud” is thoroughly chewed, swallowed, and digested as it passes through all the other chambers of the stomach. A cow spends nearly nine hours each day chewing its cud. Scientists think that when animals like cows lived in the wild they had to snatch grass in a hurry before predators attacked them. Their special stomachs allowed them to store food for later chewing and digestion once they were hidden and out of danger. Goats, sheep, camels, and antelope are other examples of ruminants.

Horses, which are often found on farms, sleep standing up for a number of reasons. Their legs can lock in place, enabling them to fall asleep without falling over. Because they are prey animals, horses often do not feel comfortable sleeping on the ground, and most of their sleeping is done during the day rather than at night when predators are out hunting. Horses have straight backs, so they cannot get up quickly. If a predator were to come while a horse was on the ground, it might not be able to get up fast enough to escape. However, horses do occasionally take short naps lying down during the day, which helps them rest their legs. When horses are in groups, they will often take turns guarding each other as they rest, with one horse standing up near the sleeping horse.

Because pigs will eat almost anything, they have traditionally been fed farm leftovers and waste. This unappealing diet—commonly known as slop—may contain food waste from a farm household or the unusable by-products of the manufacturing processes for butter, cheese, and even beer brewing. Pigs are natural foragers, frequently using their snouts to dig up roots or grubs for food when they are in the wild. On farms they are fed from low troughs, but their big snouts and foraging habits still make them very messy eaters. Adding to the dirty reputation of pigs is the fact that they are usually kept in pens, or sties, close to farm buildings to make their feeding quick and easy. They—and their messes—have been confined to small spaces, unlike cows and sheep, which are traditionally free to roam pastureland. Because pigs are raised mainly for their meat and fat, they are given a lot of food and spend most of their time eating. Piglets that weigh only a few pounds at birth can reach more than 200 pounds (90 kilograms) in less than half a year.