PROPS: Posters, 2 buckets of grain, crops as backdrop. At end – can have
kids grab an ear of corn and pose for a “cornhuskers” picture.
GRAIN PRODUCTION
(35:36 – 35:59 Have you ever taken a road trip across Iowa or Nebraska? What is the one
thing that you see a lot of? Corn! You wonder when it is going to end. Nebraska and
Iowa are corn producing states. They are soybean producing states. And they are food
production states. The two states produce a lot of food for a lot of people.
36:00 - 36:16 A great deal of the land in Nebraska is used for farming and ranching –
96% of the total land area in Nebraska is used for farming and ranching. It’s used for
production of corn, soybean, cattle, hogs, chickens, sheep and other operations.
36:17 – 36:36 What percent of Nebraska’s land base is not used for farming and
ranching? Four percent of Nebraska’s land is used for other purposes. What can be
found on that other 4% of the land? Cities and towns such as Wahoo, Omaha, Lincoln,
Wahoo and other towns are found in this area.
36:37 – 36:57 Each farmer in the United States produces enough food to feed you and
128 of your friends. Not for just one day or two days – but each farmer produces enough
food to feed 129 people 365 days of the year. That’s a big grocery cart of food!
37:08 – 37:21 The average size farm in Nebraska is 500 acres to 1,000 acres. Some
farms are smaller and some farms are bigger than this range, but on average most farms
range from 500 –1,000 acres.
37:41 – 38:10 Technically, an acre is 43,560 square feet. What is a square foot? A
square foot is one foot by one foot.
38:11 – 38:30 An acre is 43,560 of these square feet laying side by side. That can be
hard to picture. And easier way to remember the size of an acre is to think of Memorial
Stadium at the University of Nebraska. An acre is about the same size as a football field.
(SEE POSTER)
38:41 – 39:00 In Nebraska, we grow 9 million acres (or 9 million football fields) of corn
every year. And we grow 4 million acres (or 4 million football fields) of soybeans.
That’s 13 million acres of just those two crops! In addition, we also grow a lot of wheat,
alfalfa and other crops.
39:00 – 39:21 In the United States, about 70 million acres of each crop are grown. Corn
is usually planted in late April to mid-May – about the same time as you would like to be
getting out of school. And soybeans are planted in mid-May to mid-May – about the
time you are getting out of school. Both crops are usually harvested in the fall in
September and October.
39:25 – 39:45 All of these crops don’t “just happen”. It takes a lot of coordination and
effort of many people to produce all of this food. It costs the farmer between $150 $450 for every football field or acre to produce corn and soybeans. Why is that?
39:46 – 40:14 The first thing the farmer does in the spring is control weeds. For
example, here is a velvetleaf plant. If you had a lot of those weeds with your crops, they
would compete with the corn plant for sunlight, moisture, carbon dioxide, as well as
nutrients in the soil.
40:15 – 40:32 All of these things are very important because this is what the corn plant
needs to grown and produce a lot of grain. And if there is competition, there usually isn’t
enough. So that why weeds need to be controlled and is done in the spring of the year.
40:33 – 40:51 Plants also need fertilizer. Why would you apply fertilizer? Fertilizer
provides nutrients to help plants grow. Do you take vitamins? The plants need nutrients,
as well, to grow up and produce a lot of grain.
40:52 – 41:01 Some farmers still prepare the soil to plant the seed. The next step is to
plant the seed. And then those pesky weeds and insects are still there after the plants
come up, so farmers usually have to control them again.
41:02 – 41:19 Some farmers then irrigate the crops. Irrigation is when you water the
crops. However, some farmers don’t have that luxury or the opportunity to pump ground
water up to irrigate. They have to rely on Mother Nature and rainfall.
41:20 – 41:44 And during the fall, the crops are harvests and brought in to be stored in
the big steel bins that you often see on farmsteads in Nebraska and Iowa. The grain is
stored in the bins until it can be sold to a processor. From there the grain is made into all
sorts of products, such as sweetener for soda pop, candy bars, nacho chips and so forth.
41:45 – 42:10 Why does it cost the farmer $150-$450 per acre to raise the crops? The
farmer spends the money on machinery, seed, fertilizer, either buying or renting the land,
taxes, and sometimes farmers have to hire additional labor to get all the work done. Plus,
they also have to control the weeds and insects. (SEE POSTER)
42:11 – 42:21 There are a lot of mathematics involved in agriculture. Agriculture also
involves chemistry, as well as genetics, biology and many other sciences.
42:33 – 42:53 On average, a soybean plant will have 28 pods per plant with 2 seeds per
pod. Some may have three and some may have one. Take 28 times 2 and you get 56
seeds per plant.
43:11 - 43:21 A farmer plants 150,000 to 200,000 soybean seeds per acre in the spring.
At harvest time, the plants will give back about 8,500,000 seeds per acre. That’s a pretty
good return!
43:22 – 43:35 There are about 2,800 soybean seeds per pound and there is approximately
60 pounds of soybeans per bushel. If a farmer gets 50 bushels of soybeans per acre, that
is considered a good yield. That equals about 3,000 pounds of soybeans per acre.
43:44 – 44:09 The average ear of corn has about 800 kernels per ear. Some will have
more and some will have less. How many seeds of corn per acre are planted in the
spring? Between 20,000 and 30,000 seeds are planted.
44:21 – 44:45 The farmer will get about 11 million kernels of corn back at harvest. That
is a stupendous return on what the farmer started with. There are about 1,300 kernels in a
pound of corn. A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds. And if a farmer got 150 bushels per
acre, that would be a good yield. The final result is approximately 8,400 pounds of corn
from the 20,000 seed that were put into the ground.