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Advanced Placement Human Geography
Summer Assignment 2013
Part 1:
You will need to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets Behind
What You Eat, Young Readers Edition.
For your summer assignment you will only need to read Part 1: The
Industrial Meal: Food from Corn. The other parts we will read later
in the year. As you read each section in part 1, you will need to
answer the following questions. I have broken the questions down
by chapter. These chapters are relatively short and can be read
separately – I would suggest reading a chapter per day and
answering the questions immediately after reading. All answers
must be typed and you must write your answers in complete
sentences but you do NOT have to restate the question – I only
want the answer. I want your paper labeled by the title of the
chapter and numbered according to the discussion question
(Example: Chapter 1: How Corn Took over America). This book
relates to multiple topics but is most directly related to our unit on
Agriculture and Rural Land Use. The answers to these discussion
questions are due on August 23, 2013. IF YOU HAVE ANY
QUESTIONS, PLEASE EMAIL ME AT
TERESA.HOGGARD@JEFFERSON.KYSCHOOLS.US
Introduction:
1. Explain what Pollan believes is the Omnivore’s Dilemma.
2. Briefly summarize the four food chains that Pollan follows in this book.
Chapter 1: How Corn Took Over America:
1. Explain how corn is found in a variety of food in the supermarket.
2. Choose 5 items from your pantry and make a list of the hidden corn ingredients that are found in each
item. Use the chart “hidden corn” on page 11 to help identify corn derivatives.
3. Explain how biologists can tell how much corn we eat.
4. Explain how corn has become the most widely planted crop in America by tracing its spread from early
Native Americans to the present.
5. What is agribusiness?
6. What is the industrial food chain?
Chapter 2: The Farm:
1. Explain how the typical farm has changed from the early 1900s to present day. Explain typical crops
and animals and average number of people fed.
2. What is the second most planted crop in the industrial food chain?
3. What is hybrid corn?
4. What are the advantages of hybrid corn?
5. Explain genetically modified organisms (GMO’s)?
6. How are companies like Monsanto able to patent corn?
7. Explain the advantages to a diversity of crops on a farm.
8. Explain the role of feedlots in industrial corn production.
Chapter 3: From Farm to factory:
1. Explain the role of the United States government in the development of industrial corn.
2. Explain the role of fossil fuels on an industrial farm. Is the use of fossil fuels to grow industrial crops,
like corn, a sustainable method of farming for the next 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?
3. What causes the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
4. What are farm subsidies? How do these government policies hurt farmers?
5. Why do George Naylor, and other industrial farmers, continue to grow corn and soybeans rather than
other crops?
Chapter 4: The Grain elevator:
1. Identify the main corporations that buy most corn grown in the United States.
2. After looking at the graph on page 45, explain how corn is used in this country.
Chapter 5: The Feedlot – Turning Corn into Meat:
1. What is a CAFO?
2. Explain the costs of raising cattle on CAFO’s.
3. Why cattle are fed corn/grain instead of grass?
4. Describe the feedlot diet of the average cow.
5. Describe the illnesses that can be caused by cows eating a grain based diet.
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