Background Agricultural Connections
When you think of agriculture, you probably think of people growing crops or raising cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens on a farm. But agriculture includes much more than that. The people who work in factories building tractors and other farm machinery play an important role in agriculture. People in universities who research new agricultural products and new ways to grow food and fiber are involved in agriculture too. The grocer must buy agricultural products to fill the grocery shelves. The restaurant owner must buy agricultural products to prepare and serve their customers. The clothes you wear and the furniture on which you sit were probably made from agricultural products.
You may already know that steak and potatoes are agricultural products, but what about fish? Fish farming, or aquaculture, is also agriculture.
One of the fastest growing areas of agriculture is growing and selling greenhouse and nursery plants. Forestry is another area of agriculture. Tree farmers plant, nurture, and harvest trees. Then they sell the trees to companies that make paper products. The people who work in factories where paper is made and the people who sell it in stores are as much a part of agriculture as the farmer who plants the trees.
Think of all the ways in which agriculture touches your life. When you wake up in the morning, you might be lying on cotton sheets. Your pillow could be filled with down feathers from a goose. The frame of your bed is probably made of wood. These are all agricultural products, and you aren’t even out of bed yet! When you do get out of bed, you may put your feet onto a rug made from the wool of a sheep or a linoleum floor made from soybean oil. The soap you use in the shower might contain cottonseed oil or lanolin, a kind of oil from sheep’s wool. The handle of your hairbrush might be made from the bones and horns of a beef animal, and the bristles might be the bristles, or hair, of a pig. The towel you dry off with and the jeans and T-shirt you put on are made from cotton. Once you get to school you might pick up a crayon made from pig fat.
Some items you use every day are made using agricultural by-products. A by-product is a secondary product made in the manufacture of something else. For example, beef cattle are raised primarily to produce meat, but almost no part of the animal goes to waste. The animal fat is used for by-products such as candles, detergents, crayons, and perfume; internal organs are used for instrument strings and tennis racquet strings; hooves and horns are used for pet food and shampoo and conditioner; skin is used for gelatin; bones are used for charcoal and glass; hair is used for paint brushes; and blood is used for medicine.
You’ve already used dozens of agricultural products, and you haven’t even started eating. Just imagine a day without agriculture. Do you think you could survive?
