Tuesday Open Line


Ask many Americans where their food comes from, and they’ll answer the supermarket, while clothing comes from the mall. That’s why this is National Agriculture Week — an annual program focused on students across the nation, the consumers of tomorrow. They’ll learn that from pizzas to cosmetics, from clothing to orange juice, agriculture gives us what we eat each day and much of what we wear and use. In 1920, there were nearly 6.5 million farms in the U.S., and some 32 million people lived on farms. Today, the number of farms has shrunk to just 2.2 million. America has 920 million acres of farmland, averaging 418 acres per farm. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at <www.census.gov>.