[TheUWfarm] follow-up on corn

The EPA's Ag Center says corn in the U.S. is harvested from 72.7 million acres(m/a) and that 80% goes to feed cattle, poultry and fish. The National Corn Growers Association says that over 50% of U.S. corn goes to feed cattle alone. That would be more than 36.35 m/a of U.S. farmland. The USDA says that as of 2007 there were slightly more than 922 m/a of farmland in the U.S., of which, roughly 406.5 m/a are cropland(as opposed to pasture/woodland etc.) That's about 1/11 of U.S. cropland devoted to feeding corn to cows(another 408 of the 922 m/a farmland total is pasture).
ps- the piece from mother earth news is about growing your own chicken food... and I've posted the piece from Cornell's David Pimentel again.

http://www.ncga.com/livestock
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Grow-Poultry-Feed-What-Chickens-Eat.aspx
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915

______________________________
Keith Possee
Medicinal Herb Garden
Biology Department
Box 351800
University of Washington
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USA
phone: (206) 543-0436
FAX: (206) 616-2011

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