One type of farming in the USA that is seldom mentioned and almost never included in "crop" definitions: tree farming. The northern tier of states have extensive parts of them that are commercial forests. Every 20 years or so, a crop of trees is taken off them. For my own state, Maine, nearly three quarters of the state looks like wild forest to the uneducated eye. But actually, that's all timberland, where trees are being grown for commercial sale.
@@JamesThompson-ol3eu I remember back in the seventies anti logging nut jobs came down into the piney woods and started jabbering about cutting all the “old growth” forests. They left pretty quick when someone pointed out that all those trees were about 20 years old and Texas had more trees then when white people first came into the area. They thought it takes 100 years to grow a tree to marketable size here because it takes that long in northern CA, OR, and WA. Apparently that didn’t think it was very nice that we laughed at them. They went away till they decided the damn owls were endangered and came back.
The UK also has a tree farming-i believe the UKs forests are managed by something called the Forestry Commission, which aims to maintain a balance between a viable commercial forestry industry, and maintenance/expansion of UK woodlands and forests. The UK is apparently 13% forest-which doesnt sound much, and indeed isnt compared to what it was a few hundred years ago, but apparently its a rapidly increasingly number.
I was waiting to hear what the second post popular is that we’re obsessed with, corn being the first, and a commercial cut off your word “rectangles”... classic! Corn and rect... angles!
I live in Alabama right now and it's corn, peanuts, cotton, pine trees, cows and most likely soybean lol I grew up in Tennessee/Kentucky and it is tobacco, corn and cows. I am sure there is more but that was what was mainly in my area. God I miss the tobacco curing season. Smells so good!
Nebraska has more cows than people. It’s the leading in cow to human ratio. Nebraska cow to human ratio is 4 cows for every one human. Iowa is leading state for corn production, but it’s mostly used for ethanol.
I grew up in Missouri lots of corn and soybeans. And its a yellow-green kinda color. I drove through some farm country in Quebec once. Greenest valley I've ever seen. Felt the way people describe Ireland.
The reason that most of Britain is farmland and the US has huge areas that are NOT farmland is obvious when you think about climate. Britain is in its entirety in the Temperate Zone and an island and so will definitely have all the rain necessary for the land to be naturally fertile. Much of the US is either plains or desert and thus not enough water falls all year round to keep the vegetation lively.
Most of the corn grown in the U.S. is not the corn you'd eat, it is field corn, it has a very high starch content and is used in industry as fillers, or for certain plastics, or as ingredient in large animal feeds.
@@madisonbauling5928 Typically they feed grass, hay, oats, and such to cows, not corn. Pigs eat a lot of corn though, they eat a mixture of corn, oats, etc. Depends on the farm really.
We have a family farm in Indiana, every year we rotate between soybeans and corn. I saw a tomato field one time and I didn’t know what to do with myself.
10 years ago we were driving through the melon-growing area of far western Indiana at planting time... it took a while to figure out what was going on. I've also seen bright green waves of mint plants in lake country.
The corn fed to livestock, is for livestock that are raised for human consumption - so it's really a distinction without a difference. Also, the ethanol industry produces distillers grains which are livestock feed, so about 1/3 of the output of the ethanol plants is still for food. Same thing with corn syrup, corn gluten feeds are a livestock feed that is produced as a by-product of making corn sweeteners.
@@jeffp3415 No, there is an actual difference. This Midwesterner dares you to eat an entire cob's worth of Field Corn. Will it kill you? No. Will you like it? Probably not. (Sweet Corn=good for corn-on-the-cob, everyday human consumption. Field Corn= good for animals, and chemical/manufacturing of syrups, fuel, etc. ) Another fun fact: you can eat sweet corn, straight from the field, just pick a cob, shuck it, and chow down. Same principle as an apple tree. It is hungry, you want a snack, and there is a sweet treat.
since 1824 a bushel has been defined as 8 imperial gallons, or 2,219.36 cubic inches (36,375.31 cubic cm). In the United States the bushel is used only for dry measure. The U.S. level bushel (or struck bushel) is equal to 2,150.42 cubic inches (35,245.38 cubic cm) and is considered the equivalent of the Winchester bushel, a measure used in England from the 15th century until 1824. A U.S. level bushel is made up of 4 pecks, or 32 dry quarts. Two bushels make up a unit called a strike. Just trying to help....
Is the blue you see the same blue I see? A friend in school was color blind way back in the day, late 70s. I asked him the same question, and to pick a red crayon. He picked out a light blue. Funny thing, he makes a load of money painting fish trophys. How he does it, I have no clue.
@@ducewags generally colorblindness only applies to one or two primary colors being seen wrong. most other colors are seen as most other people see them. though there are , like everything else on the planet, exceptions to this
@@guywells9455 very true, and some exceptions can be things that boggle the mind. I have a maternal cousin who was born with achromatopsia. A rare fluke, as there is no known cause for it in his case. (no tumors, no trauma, no genetic predisposition, "just one of those things" according to the doctor.) Yet he memorized all the shades of gray that he could, which allows him to carry on with relatively few hiccups.
In Texas, the mild winter means being able to get in two crops, even three, selected carefully. Winter wheat or sorghum withe feed corn or cotton afterward are common to see. And the rapid-boll cotton now commonly used goes from green to leafless purple at the end of its season. Also, the corn crop is actually two crops. There's sweet corn for human consumption, and feed corn, which is used for animal feeds and industrial applications (like ethanol). Modern feed corn varieties actually stop making chlorophyll and look all dried up as they focus all energy on ear production.
You might be specifically referring to what corn is typically grown in Texas, but there's a lot of variety to corn, there's something like 30 thousand varieties of corn, most of which fit into several categories, sweetcorn, popcorn, flint corn, flour corn, and of course the most widely grown dent/field corn, while almost all field corn is used as animal feed/fuel/industrial use, lots of food are made from dent corn, anything with cornmeal, corn syrup, corn starch are made from field corn
Yeah hard grain corn is the most common grain in our diets by a mile due to its cheapness and ability to be transformed into so many things. You can make it into a sugar replacement, after all. Nobody thinks about how much corn they're eating when they drink a soda.
@@troubledwaters7441 it's one of those odd little facts I learned when I was in HS and had to learn Kansas History to graduate (Also we learned why we don't like Missouri)
You really missed a big difference, the American homestead of a quarter section of land. Free land which attracted millions of Europeans to immigrate to the USA. Google Maps satellite image shows the grid of square mile roads, a quarter section is a quarter of a square mile, 160 acres. Even in the more arid areas of the Great Plains you see the quarter sections irrigation crop circles as well. Why 160 acres? During the 19th century that was about as large a farm a farmer could plow with a horse which provided the farmer a middle class income. Check out Kansas. Check out the Homestead Act...
That’s especially obvious if you do a fly over of western Nebraska as well. The high plains don’t get a whole lot of rain, so there is far greater need of irrigation in those parts of the country.
You are correct but overstate the abilities of a horse and plow somewhat. The popular saying after the Civil War was that each farm family needed "40 acres and a mule" to get by. One farmer with one mule and a single-bottom steel plow could plow 40 acres in the month or so he had to get his crops planted in the spring. In the late nineteenth century, most family farms were 40 acres, or a quarter of a quarter section. After World War I, gasoline tractors came into use and farms began to grow. When I grew up in 1950s Wisconsin, most family farms were 120 acres, consisting of interlocking "L" shapes made up of three 40-acre parcels. A full quarter section (160 acres) was considered a large farm. Today, all Wisconsin family farms are "corporate" farms; most have gotten rid of their livestock and just raise crops; and many are over 1000 acres.
A lot of fields in Japan are oddly shaped too due to them being so old going back further in history when more people were farming smaller plots and the plots usually followed the natural contours of the land. After the war the government redrew the lines for some plots to make them square and more accessible to machinery, but you still see lots of small oddly shaped family plots too.
I grew up on one of those 'rectangle fields' farms you were flying over in Kansas. Especially west of the Appalachians our farms and fields (and many of our States, counties, and townships) are laid out as a result of surveying in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In Britain, many of the farm and field boundaries were established long before surveying was a thing.
Hi Jovan. Surveying isn't a new thing. The Romans were surveying in England with accurate instruments 2,000 years ago. Some archived English boundary maps go back at least 1,000 years.
In Illinois the township system is based on sections, each section being 1 square mile (640 acres), with 36 sections in a township. Many of the sections were laid out with roads as the boundaries.
Just as an aside, amerindian boundaries were generally streams or other geographic formations.. The township system cut these areas up. The oldest cemeteries along with an office of sorts were located in a pattern.generally with a spring. you look for a strangely shaped section.
Our homesteaded farm here in Missouri has been in the family for about 200 years now. We had sheep briefly but my forebearers really disliked them and we've rarely raised them since. Fields even as recently as the 1960s were much more like those in the UK. As machinery grew in size, dividing fence rows were removed and fields became more rectangular. The 30 acre field closest to my house was once divided into 7 separate fields. You couldn't fit a modern combine into those spaces. Modern planting and harvesting equipment is massive.
That homestead should be broken up along with all of the old farms and sold to new individuals who actually want to farm. They are half of why we have a housing crisis in the country.
When I was a kid my English Aunt Ella came to visit for a while. She stayed with family members in various states. When she was in Western Massachusetts, we took her on drives around Historic Deerfield and the Berkshires. She saw the gracious homes with huge lawns. She was amazed. She remarked “All that land, and not a sheep on it!” She thought it was wasteful to grow grass, only to mow it to keep it short...sheep would do the job for free AND you would get wool or mutton!
@@bond1j89 one thing that I have heard about goats is that if/when they eat grass they eat it right down to the roots, where as sheep only eat the green bits on top. So the grass will grow back after sheep, but less so after goats. I don't know any goats personally, so I can't verify that I'm correct.
I never realized that the two terms weren't interchangeable. Thanks for making me do some googling. lcdmcorp.com/grain-flow-101/whats-the-difference-between-silos-and-grain-bins/
@@paulwoodman5131 grain bins hold animal feed too. It's just a matter of construction and how they're emptied. Grain bins empty from the bottom, silos empty from the top. Along with some other differences. Tower silos are being replaced with bunkers left and right though, easier to maintain. You'd only build a tower silo now if you really didn't have the room for a bunker.
Man i haven't been back in a while. That would be neet to see. My family down in Tennessee grew grain for the livestock but that was only a couple acres or so
Cathi Palmer I wish we had parts that looked like Colorado! And Missouri for that matter. 😂 We have some areas of rolling hills (the Flint Hills are beautiful) and a few modest rock formations. Pretty stuff in my opinion but nothing like the Rocky Mountains or the Ozarks. And definitely not as wooded as either state except real close to Missouri or near rivers. I may be in the minority but think the wide open spaces and hilly areas are quite nice and perfect for farming and ranching of course. 😁
You'll see those stone walls and weirdly shaped plots in New England. Makes sense. The whole cows/cattle thing is because we have both vast dairy farms and huge cattle ranches. Totally different beasts.
That caught my interest when I flew over them. In the ag areas on CA they either flood irrigate or they have big irrigation pipes in wheels that you move across the field.
Oh. You're one of those draining the Ogallala natural underground reservoir? Faster than nature can refill it? Be sure and keep and eye on those estimated water levels and sell before it's exhausted.
I drive one of them big rigs from coast to coast, after 22 years of doing this job I'm still amazed at how many cattle ranches we have !! I can't even go a whole day without seeing some cattle,i love em anyhow. Often I will wave at them and and yell "Hello cow boo's"
Good thing winters almost here then they'll be moved back to stock pens for the calving season so the babies don't freeze to death and be protected from predators here in ND then we can get the party over with XD
@@patrickmartin3322 -- The Finger Lakes terrane [sic] is different from the rest of the Eastern US. It's glaciated, with interlake hilltops between broad lake valleys, and other areas having a number of glacial features that give distinctive rolling hills.
as is southern Indiana and southern Ohio big parts of Missouri and Arkansas. A slim sliver from on both the seat and west of the Alleghanies from PA to Alabama.
@@Drengade The Great Basin, Mohave, Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts area all natural deserts in the USA. Unfortunately we do suffer from desertification, the cause is mostly from over grazing rather than over farming, though it certainly lends its hand.
RE: the map at 1:58. Much of the dark green color in the Great Plains states is actually rangeland that's never been broken out, not farmland. Also, those things at 7:18 are bins for storing grain, not silos. Silos are filled with green whole plant material (corn, alfalfa, grass, etc.) to ferment into silage, which if properly done in airtight conditions pickles itself with lactic acid.
@@stur4622 The difference isn't the shape -- if you see a big concrete cylinder on a farm it very probably is a silo -- but a silo is used for silage, meaning something that is pickled/fermented, which requires moisture and preventing exposure to air. Silage is used for animal feed. Dry grain, on the other hand, is not stored in silos but rather grain bins like in the photo in this video.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 That's not necessarily true. Silos are very commonly used for bulk storage without silage all the time. Basically any bottom-unloading silo(which are quite common in the US) or any large community silo aren't likely to be used for silage. but yes, those were grain bins.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 my point is that in the rest of the English speaking world we use the term 'silo' as you would 'bin'. Could be 100t on-farm, could be the squillion-tonne regional grain depot, could be a large manufacturer storing anything dry/granular. On farm could be grain, or fertiliser. Almost always top loading, generally with a funnel shaped base with angle dependent on what's being stored. Apologies if our etymology is wrong but we call it a silo. Fwiw silage where I'm from (AU) is generally plastic wrapped bales, or bales in a plastic-lined pit/trench. Pre-plastic would have just been in the ground covered with earth.
@@stur4622 "silage where I'm from (AU) is generally plastic wrapped bales, or bales in a plastic-lined pit/trench." I think bunker silos (basically above ground pit silos) are the norm in the US today. Plastic wrapped bales are used, too, but I think they'd commonly be called baleage. There are plenty of the tall cylindrical silos (like you see on all sorts of product imagery next to a red barn) still around, but they seem to rarely be used any more.
Dry stone walls were common around fields in the northeast US. However, a lot of those farms, like my family's in Pennsylvania, went out of business over the 20th century as it became far more economical to farm the larger, flatter fields in the west. The prevalence of maize (corn) in the US diet, even indirectly via livestock feed, leads to a detectable difference in the human body of Carbon 14 (IIRC) and with history in the hair. A friend was one of the chemists involved in the study and one day popped into my office door (I worked at the same university) to say, "Hi! Can I have some of your hair?" for part of that study.
You will see a distinct difference in farmland developed prior to Civil War and Post-Civil War. The further from Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, the more rectangular the plots are.
Yep. We also have very rocky soil in the northeast, which is not great for general farming. Raising animals like chicken and cows and in churn, dairy, along with orchards and berry growing are far more common.
Yup, I live rural PA and there are still some stone walls scattered around, but they're usually abandoned or on state lands. They're not in my area, but elsewhere in the state they are still some stone cairn-like structures, too.
My mom grew up in a tiny town in Minnesota that relied heavily on farming and fishing. Her uncle owned a farm where he raised cattle and grew corn. I remember visiting that farm many years ago, and I miss going up to that little town. My grandpa sold his house about 7 or 8 years ago and moved down to Florida after my grandma died. When I was a kid, I lived in Texas. My family had a friend who owned a small farm and we'd visit frequently. When my siblings and I had too much energy, she'd put us to work wrangling chickens or herding goats. Before that, up in New York, I had a first grade field trip to an ostrich farm. Now I live in Nebraska, coincidentally about two hours from where my great-great grandpa ended up when he came over from a German colony in Russia in the late 1800s. I don't know any farmers now. I wish I did. I'm moving further into the city eventually to be closer to the hospital, but I would love to wander around on some farmland while my health permits it. There's a farmer who lives just beyond my backyard, but they don't really mingle with us suburban folks. I do get to see and hear them working the corn and soybean fields several times a year though.
@@nathanielkidd2840 That was my thought, most farmers I know are more than happy to bend an ear as long as you aren't interrupting planting, harvesting, or other time sensitive tasks. Just don't trespass the crop or livestock fields and be friendly.
@@genevievenoble8120 Haha, my friend, a little Scottish grandmother , almost got me arrested twice in one weekend with her "Scots can walk anywhere" attitude
cjpenning, is that what was going on at 9:22? I was wondering if that was the hiking footpaths I've heard the U.K. is famous for. Are they usually that heavily populated or was this maybe a special event in the area?
@@crazypiratesquirrel3038 I'm not sure what was going on in the video, but the UK footpaths I'm familiar with are just paths the public has a right to use at any time. They cut right across some fields, and the farmers go about their business of plowing and planting like normal.
The wonderful thing is the fact that American farmers make up less then 3% of the population and feed all of us plus 20% of the world as well! The only other comparable country is Canada, though they have a problem with a short growing season thus they import citrus fruits from California and Florida.
@@marcusfox2443 California, a state with 40 million people grows more food then Australia a country with 25 million people. New York state, pop 20 million, produces as much wine and food as Australia!
@@sherrieburcham6287 No not corn, as corn or maize as Europeans call it, can be harvested in cold weather. I remember harvesting corn in November with snow on the ground!
the Netherlands is #2 in agri/horicultural export on the world, population 17 million, 0,6% of the population are farmers. the low number is explained by them using high tech tools and methods. the export industry is worth roughly 90 billion euros annually, more than half of the USA's exports (~140 billion), 64% to be more precise. (the USA is about 230 times bigger in land size, and population about 22-23x) 14x the amounts produced per capita. (in value) the numbers are mind-boggling. therefor this country of 17 million beats Australia's total production by a near 50%, with just its exports. in terms of production per capita, or production to land mass ratio, we can't even see the USA in the rear view mirror, let alone canada, so no, not only is Canada not the only comparable country, it's not even remotely close to being 2nd in any metric, the numbers just aren't there.
You should check out South African farms. I noticed a lot with round shapes. Apparently there is some irrigation rig that goes in a circle. But they also have an overabundance of sheep. My in-laws thought all Americans were wealthy because we eat so much pork, chicken and beef, but little sheep. They couldn't believe it when i explained how pricey and hard to find lamb can be in the US vs. Beef. Now my nephews want to move here and raise cows!
"irrigation rig that goes in a circle" Yes, it's called a center pivot. They exist in America too, but they will only make the obvious circle shape when the surrounding land is so dry that nothing else can grow there.
@@brycepatties I moved to ETX 3.5 years ago and was astonished to find center pivot operations. It appears mostly dairies that grow their own feed stuff. There is alot of rain fall here - NorthEast Tx - these properties are at the edge of NorthEast TX but the different in color is quite apparent. Really surprised when so much rain fall is here.
Center pivots in density go from Northern Texas to Southern Alberta in Canada following the eastern rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains. It's causing problems because it's using up all the ground water.
Bushel always reminds me of my daughter’s favorite song to sing at night before bed...🎶”I love you a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap...” 🎶 It’s from Guys and Dolls. All sorts of crazy units of measurement in there 🤣
7:25 "Sending crops into space" made me laugh-from the other side of story. I live US Midwest. Growing up, I always thought it funny that so many si-fi shows built their ships/rockets in or out of silos.
You almost can't go out your door in Montana without seeing a cow. Or, at least be within 10 miles of seeing one. The top crop export from this state is wheat. It's beautiful to see the massive fields of gold in the breeze.
@@suem6004 Yeah, I pick up the, (is it 12 grain cereal?) there along with wheat and flour in bulk. Call ahead and they will put it in a storage container with O2 absorbers for long term storage. I have to stop there on the way to Bozeman from Helena just to get their ham and swiss pastry. 😍
@@candicehoneycutt4318 LOL, I gave up the chickens. Mountain lion tore the whole coop down. All I could do was stand on the upper deck and watch. If I had to I could set up again, but that was enough to back me off them for a while. I try to drive straight through Illinois. My bank cards won't work there and I have to gas up in Iowa then get to another gas station in Indiana. Problems with too many stolen numbers via the processing companies in Illinois. Which I'm sure is a huge problem in the Chicago area. But, yeah, lots of chickens there.
Rhiahl There's a lot of big critters out here, but not too many mountain lions thankfully. I don't live on a farm, but a lot of people in my rural town raise chickens. We're not really supposed to have cows in city limits, but somebody has one that occasionally escapes and hangs out at the gas station for some unexplained reason lol. I've never heard of that happening down here in southern IL.
@Lost in the Pond You may have another video here: Those trees around all the fields you saw, they have a reason they are there. Look up "The Dust Bowl" I doubt it was taught when you were a lad.
Enjoyed your video and your perspective! As an American, our relationship with agricultural farming and beef cattle go way back in American history. Please research the history of the longhorn cattle, brought to North America by the Spaniards, creating vast wild herds of cattle. Also research the history of Western cattle drives, such as the Chisholm trail to name a few. Finally, research the "Mason County Wars" of the state of Texas, which involved the sheep ranchers vs. cattlemen. Which boiled down to the use of barbed wire (sheep ranchers) and the open range used by cattlemen. This war was both bloody and lawless, one of my ancestors was a Texas Ranger at the time, and was involved in the final arrest of the corrupt Mason county sheriff. Thus there is a reason that beef is still king in America, its as America as the Cowboy!
I'm in the epicenter of corn, soybean and pork production, Iowa. It's true that the biggest share of corn goes into livestock feed or ethanol production. I don't know if it's still true, but at one time Iowa was second behind Texas in the number of miles of gravel roads. The roads were needed to move crops to the transportation hubs and back then there were thousands of small family farms.
Yeah I was thinking the same. I'm wondering about the average age of those with all that knowledge. It would be a shame if it all gets lost or no one cares in 10-15 years!
The first time my uncle saw the WTC twin towers he seriously said those are huge grain elevators. Everyone thought he was joking but no he was serious. He really thought they were grain elevators. Yeah he was a farmer in Ohio and Kentucky but he knew he was in New York City. He had left the Midwest as he served in WWII in Europe. It's a funny family story now.
@@deadfreightwest5956 Dr. Carson's thought would fit with "seven fat years and seven lean years - maybe they capped them when no longer needed, don't know, never heard him say that. He's pretty smart though.
I live in North Missouri and yes cattle do out number us but to be fair we like our burgers there are a lot of hogs in the US as well you got get bacon some how.
I was in the north of Wales during lambing season in 2008. I'll never forget it. I was able to go to a farm and got to hold the little lambs. They are so sweet! And the dogs that farmers use are the smartest dogs you can imagine, and so trained and controlled! They are amazing! I do love America for so many reasons, but I will say that we are woefully short on sheep. And thatched roof cottages.
If you go to an old fashioned pub in sheep Country you will often find at least one and often more boarder collies curled up in front a log fire in the bar! (this is one reason the bar side of a traditional countryside pub has a flagstone floor and plain wooden chairs - most pubs will have a seperate lounge side with comfier chairs, carpet, and if they serve food tables for that food)
I think if you flew over the east coast you would find that the farms resemble British farmes more. The boundaries tend to follow the terrain ub gukkt abd mountainous terrain. However, whe we expanded through the Mid West and the Plains, the land is fairly flat and the land was surveyed before being divvied up. especilly in the Plains where it was given out by the governmen as part of the Homestead Act.Thus the land was handed out in "quarter section, 160 acres (1/4 of a square mile or 640 acres) Further, there seems to have been a tendency to deetermine location of a farmer in terms of quarters of the quarter section. Ask the farmer's wife where he was and she would likely say he was in the north forty (acres) although that would likely actually be either the Northwest or Northeast forty.
Here in the US especially in more arid western states pivot crops meaning the sprinkler pivots from the center of a circle and is not a rectangle are quite common. Also to think the Central Valley of California produces a significant amount of the US crops for such a small region
california has the advantage of being volcanically active in geological time and being a huge flood plain, not to mention the weather. the water is a bit iffy now but it's to there.
They actually started developing center-pivot irrigation systems that could cover the corners of square fields back in the 1970's. ua-cam.com/video/ZIVyUlJFsZE/v-deo.html
Maridel Weaver it even seems like some crops can be harvested a third time especially in the southern San Joaquin Valley My grandparents harvested crops in Tulare county They had over a 100 fruit trees along several acres of other fruits and vegetables on their property in Madera I made money in the summer packing pears in Lake County I drove back and forth through the rice fields all the time Also in the same area during late summer the tomatoes through the Woodland area smells so bad
You will also find many circular fields in the US because they are irrigated central pivot irrigation systems, the water is drawn from an aquifer (unfortunately draining it faster than its replenished which will probably lead to an ecological disaster in the future)
One thing I saw a while back was a Scotsman commenting on the differences between Scotland and America. One observation went something like, "You go from one end to another and you see the same rocks, trees, grass. Go to America and every few hours you can see a different landscape." This is true and explains a lot of the differences. I grew up in California and have lived in Oregon, Idaho, Missouri, Arkansas, and have been to most of the states. There are so many differences between those states and my current home in Iowa that my mother-in-law, that just moved here from California, feels like she is in a different country. When I drove out here towing a trailer for her, I went from California cropland in the San Joquin Valley, where just about everything is produced- but not much corn- lots of oranges, of course. Over Tehachapi and down into the desert. Passing through Las Vegas and heading into Utah, the scenery is quite varied, but still, flatish until you get into Utah and see the wonderous colors in Zion National Park. This leads you over the Rockies to Denver, and every mile has something new to rubberneck. (Is that work in the British lexicon?) After the descent to Denver, you encounter lots and lots of Midwest farmland. To understand the differences, you need to understand the varied weather and humidity. Humidity is something I never considered for the first 3 decades of my life, having never experienced it. We moved to Arkansas in 1994 during December and when summer rolled around I thought I would die! Back home you had 110-degree heat, but all dry. A cheap swam cooler kept you cool and was affordable. In Arkansas and the midwest states, you can't use one, as it causes the walls to become damp like they are sweating. (I talked to somebody that tried it!) So lots of window units here, unless you can afford central air. But we have green all year round until it is killed off by below freezing temps. Back home you had a week or two of green in spring, then it all dies- you can see why the great concern about fires there. I grew up watching borate bombers go over our house, combating wildfires. In fact, the whole place was a tinderbox, and when responding to local calls Police always scan the crowds for one who has a history of arson. Yes, they light fires to see the excitement they can cause. What was my point? Oh, the differences in crops, colors, etc. I think it has to do with humidity and all that. The corn here is awesome, like nothing I ever had back home. We have lots of hog ranches, too. But no oranges. We ship them bacon and corn, they send us oranges and melons, or something like that. And I know from Basil Fawlty that Brits get orange juice in a can. We can, too. O is made from the smaller, less sellable oranges. I know, because I worked in an Orange Packing House during the summer. Out here in Iowa I would have tasseled corn, or fed hogs. So there you go, highly researched and ready for public consumption. P.S. our sheep would be packing, so don't push us, man.
California alone - driving 80 from San Fran to Reno (4 hrs) - You'll see a wide variety of environments, agriculture, city, and forest. Go north to south, and you'll get even more.
@@LG123ABC -My Husband was like that, but I found out that his Grand mother had taken some out of the freezer and left it to thaw way too long in the kitchen sink. Then we moved near my Sister.who was raising sheep, when he taste fresh leg of lamb he changed his mind. I've never had mutton.
@@christelheadington1136 Lamb is a... well, lamb. Mutton is an older sheep, tougher and more gamey. Lamb to eat directly, and mutton for stew and stuff you cook the sh*t out of.
You should read some of the history between sheep vs cattle, especially in Texas. The are whole pages of ranch feuding between cattle and sheep ranchers. Basically, cattle ranchers wanted more of the green pastureland for cattle and would start shoot outs to get rid of sheep. Unfortunately, the cattle ranchers won.
I used to sit and listen to some old west Texas Ranchers talk. One of the old guys raised sheep and the other Old-Timers were Cattlemen. They would go back and forth over sheep versus cattle and Shepherds versus Cowboys. I always got a kick out of listening to them fuss. The old sheep Rancher would look over at me, the preacher, and ask, "Who did God call on when He needed something done? The answer's obvious, a Sheep man man."
stephanie rando, wow, you just jogged my memory. I vaguely recall something in my 9th grade history book about cattlemen vs. sheep men, but I think your post here goes into more detail than my textbook did!
More than anything the feuds had a whole lot to do with the fact that when out on pastureland, cattle eat by actually pulling up the grass with their tongues, as in a sort of grab almost like how we would grab it with our hands except they "grab" it by wrapping their tongues around it. This actually leaves some of the grass still in the ground to continue to grow. Grass maggots, err, sheep, actually bite the grass and do so so close to the root that it often not only left the grasslands damaged but left little if any grass tall enough for cattle to then come and feed on the same grounds. Whereas sheep could still feed after cattle grazed, there is no way for cattle to be able to feed after sheep have grazed. This is one of the reasons that sheep have often been used to keep lawns "mowed", including at the White House, (during WWII I think?). Anyway, just thought Id throw that out there.
A lot had to do with how they graze - cows graze about 4" above the ground, sheep graze right to the ground. The time for next growth was a problem. A combination of cows and sheep seems to work but you need fields to be able to move them to and if all the fields are in fallow, nobody eats.
If you go to drier regions in the US you can also find lots of perfectly round farms. Center pivot irrigation. They're watered by a rotating sprinkler line. They're most common just east of the Rockies from the Northern Square part of Texas, through western Kansas and up to Southern Alberta in Canada.
I'm in rural Texas and most of my neighbors are cattle. I started a small herd of meat goats 3 years ago - makes for interesting conversations with beef ranchers.
If there's a lost cause I can get behind it's returning the word corn to its proper (original) usage, meaning any and all cereal crops such as wheat, barley, oats, rice, rye etc.... a n d... maize. Maize is a perfectly good word, so why did we stop using it?
A very old Irish saying : "(The name of someone or something goes here) was looking as forlorn as a lost god in a cornfield". The "lost god" being referred to was a pagan harvest idol made up many harvests before but it was no longer renewed yearly , signifying its help was no longer sought. However, disturbing it during any later harvest cleanups was not thought wise.
@@glowormrdr6183 What does that mean? "Because...grain". Or don't you have any idea what I said? Or do you mean that grain is the right word for what the Brits call corn? No, because grain refers to much more than cereal crops and includes legumes like soy beans and chick peas, as well as several other families of crops.
Corn is a word that was generic and derived from German origins. When the first. English colonists arrived, they, logically enough, called the indigenous cereal Indian corn. In time, they just dropped the adjective and thus Americans use the word corn for that one grain.
That sounds like the average farm today is much larger and produces dramatically more food per acre. We know the American population has increased significantly, and yet they're being fed from significantly fewer acres.
@@Tux.Penguin Yes, correct on all accounts. I think back in 1900 the average farm was about 100-something acres, and today the average is 400-something. My dad grew corn the old fashioned way, like they did back in the 1950s. Today the farmers are WAY more efficient. I think we calculated it up once and my dad would have to go through the entire field 11 to 13 times in a season with a very slow and old tractor that burned a lot of diesel fuel. Today the farmers only go through a field I think 4 to 5 times with new equipment that just flies through. I think a farmer today can plant his 120 acre pivot field in about 4 hours. That used to take my dad 3 or 4 days to do. This saves a buttload of diesel fuel. Plus the new farming methods really save on water and land erosion. I think I heard that in the past 20 years, farmers increased production of corn like 117% on the same area of land. I would be willing to bet, that if they can crack the GMO code, they will be able to increase corn production dozens of times, while drastically reducing fuel, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and fertilizer use.
Sadly the majority of the family farms have been bought up by big corporations. It’s just not financially sustainable to run small family farms anymore. And the majority of small farm farmers still holding on are over 60 years old.
@@lacyLor It's not sad really. Mega farmers and corporations are far more efficient. Big corporate farmers buy new equipment and adopt new farming methods easily by hiring number crunchers to calculate the best way to increase productivity. Small farms run by old timers, just don't adopt new technologies and are more likely to drive very old machinery that guzzle the fuel. My dad was still using equipment from the 1960s, 50s, and 40s in the year 2000. Plus big corporate farmers use much bigger equipment that gets the job done much faster and using less fuel. If you calculate the amount of grain a new semi can haul, and then haul the same amount of grain with an old F350 truck, you will find that the truck will burn way more diesel than the semi does.
It’s sad to me that the way of life is being lost. Children growing up helping on the family farm, extended families and neighbors helping each other harvest, ect, all being lost to history. Farming is still happening in my family but many generations of tradition it will die out in one more generation, just like it will for many families. My father still farms because he loves it, he barely makes any profit.
Canola is a form of rapeseed that has been genetically modified to have lower levels of the toxic erucic acid, and therefore more suitable for human consumption (the oil). It also has lower amounts of glucosinolates, which gave rapeseed oil a bitter taste. The name "Canola" stems from the fact that it was developed in Canada (Canada + ola(oil)).
Iowa Great Plains, here. Currently experiencing what I call hayfever season. Now that the crops are out the air is filled with grain dust and all flavors of manure. Love it. 😉
@@jonadabtheunsightly Trouble is that wool is not particularly valuable on the market, having mostly been replaced with cotton and synthetic fabrics, so keeping sheep for wool is not profitable. Therefore, sheep are kept primarily for meat, with the wool being essentially a byproduct of the process, since sheep have to be shorn anyway.
Oh yea, lamb is a popular, cultural favorite to prepare for Easter. Lamb is good. So is goat. I've also had rattlesnake, ground hog, opossum and alligator. I will essentially eat anything too slow or too stupid to get away from me. Avoid my house after the apocalypse. [Vegans. The other white meat. 😋🍖🍗🥓😨 ]
Laurence. There is a difference between arable and pasture land. US has more pasture land. But as you say, so few sheep. Wool is an important crop in Britain due to tradition. Not as much in the US. I do handspin so have my shepherds on speed dial. Another difference is that your ancient fields are yet surrounded by stone but also but hedgerows. Lots and lots with cute hedge hogs. British farmers also dress up as if going on a job interview instead of physical labor. The tweed jackets, wool waistcoats, collared shirt and tie. I think Americans would find that fascinating.
To be fair, Oliver Wendell Douglas wore a wool suit, white shirt, red vest and necktie every day as he worked his farmland, the Haney Farm. But that was in the 1960's.
The presence of large predators in North America made keeping sheep somewhat more difficult than cattle. At the same time widespread cotton production greatly reduced the need for wool which in turn drove up the price and decreased the availability of lamb and mutton, the two major byproducts of wool production. You’d only start to see sheep really catch on as some of the drier rangeland in the Western US was settled in the late 1800s by which time Americans were already largely meeting their meat demands with beef and pork. Even in the Caribbean where some British colonies developed their own breeds of sheep these ran more towards hair sheep raised solely for meat as opposed to the wool sheep you’ll see in the UK.
I'm almost 60 years old and I'm a Texan. I've only eaten lamb once in my life, at an Indian restaurant about 40 years ago. I can't recall how it tasted, probably spicey. lol! I eat beef probably at least 3 times weekly. Last night I had an awesome filet mignon! :)
I can testify to all the cows. I’m from Idaho. The smell of manure is the smell of home. Some kids are obsessed with unicorns or LEGOs. Idaho kids are obsessed with cows.
One reason for the grid pattern, especially the further west you go is because in colonial times, the English metes and bounds were used as survey boundaries along the Atlantic Coast and spreading out to those areas settled by colonials. However, a system known as Township & Range began to be used in territories acquired some time after Texas joined the Union. In the state of Texas alone, you will find that most of the counties in East Texas are metes & bounds but as you get past the west of San Antonio and up north in the Panhandle you see the Township and Range.
The Land Ordinance Act of 1785 is the reason why the mid-west is so blocky. Settlements before then, such as in the South and the East coast, are not blocky since they were founded before then. Essentially, the West and Midwest were divided into townships, 6 miles squared, and each township was then subdivided into 36 1 square mile subdivisions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Ordinance_of_1785
Blocky divisions tend to yield straight roads which may be boring but are easier to memorize and navigate than the plate of spaghetti you find in eastern areas. Also, side note: if you divide a square mile into 16 portions, each one will be 40 acres, not just one.
@@Tux.Penguin well the Roman built strait road in the UK, and in London we abandoned them. Paris has strait roads in a sort of starfish out form the Arc de Triumph. They were designed like this to put down dissent, which obviously didn't work too well. It also allowed the Nazi to roll into the centre of Paris with their Tanks largely unopposed, which wouls have been a tall order in London.
Much of that planning took place under Thomas Jefferson! He thought it would take a thousand years to settle the continent. In his planning and legislation some part of every section was designated for schools, the idea being not that the schools would occupy it, but the land could be sold only if the money went to local schools.
I don’t know if it’s significantly different but the Central Valley (or California Plains) has a large number of orchards and vineyards compared to the Midwest.
The Midwest is not synonymous with the great plains. Kansas is so flat you can bounce of quarter of it, southern Indiana is so hilly you can barely cut sod.
Those same stone walls can be found in new england. One area in Connecticut where I grew up had walls everywhere although there was no longer any farmland to be found. They are interesting to see in the woods.
Very interesting. I loved my time serving in the USAF with the RAF and RAAF in the desert. Conversations about things like farming and just everyday life were so much fun.
You need to look up the history of the Cattle Ranchers and Sheep Hearders in the US. The Cattle business has been for over a hundred years in the US actively lobbying against sheep and shepherds as they often fight over the same land. This is a big reason we don't have as much demand for mutton in the US. Its a really intresting history to go into
Sheep Wars From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Sheep Wars,[1][2] or the Sheep and Cattle Wars,[3][4] were a series of armed conflicts in the Western United States which were fought between sheepmen and cattlemen over grazing rights. Sheep wars occurred in many western states though they were most common in Texas, Arizona and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado. Generally, the cattlemen saw the sheepherders as invaders, who destroyed the public grazing lands, which they had to share on a first-come, first-served basis. Between 1870 and 1920, approximately 120 engagements occurred in eight different states or territories. At least 54 men were killed and some 50,000 to over 100,000 sheep were slaughtered
Many farmers just grew corn before, the difference is how quickly it turns into animal feed and the nutrient ratio of the corn when it reaches that point.
When I was a kid we spent summers working other people's ranches. I liked it, mainly because my job was "riding fence" (repairing fence-cattle are hard on fences). When I was 12 my mother talked me and my brother into converting our 2.5 acres into a farm. Doesn't sound like much but it was a tremendous amount of work. Most miserable year of my life. It taught me to never pick on a farmer. Not only are they dedicated, they understand the soil in a way you can never fathom.
@@brandondavis7777 Where I grew up, Herefords were the primary type of cattle. I don't know if it's only this type of breed, but they become obsessed with the grass on the other side of the fence. What they will do is line their body up, lengthwise, with the fence and lean until the fence post breaks. Keep in mind that when a ranch is measured in square miles, not acres, the fence posts are the pinon and mesquite trees that make up the scrub in New Mexico. All it takes is one fence post to open about 15 feet of fence, which is more than enough for several cows to get through. AND usually I would find them right at the broken spot in the fence, just munching away. I would get them back on the right side of the fence, mend the fence, then move on.
Interesting. I grew up in New England which has loads of dry stone walls all over the woods which used to all be farm land, mainly sheep grazing land, before the Midwest was colonized. There's still some sheep, but nowhere near what it used to be. Only the stone walls remain.
I love the U.K. It's a sentimental travel destination for me. I discovered this channel right after studying abroad in London. and it was like, so cool to hear a british person make the same comparisons i was making, albeit more informed.
As an inveterate Anglophile there is something I would like to recommend to you: "Alistair Cooke's America" Cooke was a Blackpool lad who took a job with the BBC, came to the US on assignment, and wound up staying. He got his US Citizenship in the late-'30s, conveniently before he would have had to go back home and join up (on account of that guy with the small mustache), and not long after the war ended starting doing recording for a weekly segment on BBC Radio entitled "Letter From America" wherein he explained his new country (or did his best) to the denizens of his old one. In the mid-1970s, he hosted a 13-part series produced by Time-Life Films based upon his 1973 book of the same name. It's a fascinating, albeit by no means conclusive, look at 200 years of the existence of the US as only a native Briton could tell it. In writing this I have been looking to see if it available on UA-cam, but it seems only individual episodes are hosted on any given channel and the Time-Life section of Internet Archive is grossly disorganized. So good luck, I have just set you a task which might not be do-able.
Where I grew up in Northern California, the major crops in our area are almonds, walnuts, and rice. California grows many different crops, depending upon the location within the state.
7:30 dry stone walls were a big thing here in the US as well for hundreds of years. If you travel along the east coast of the US, especially in the areas where settlers first came, stone walls existed everywhere and in many cases, still do. Look for Dutch settlements in New York, for example. My family's own farm has stone walls everywhere. We also have an early irrigation system on the hilly areas that incorporates clay tiles, which are basically fired clay tubes and collect run-off water and carries it away from the farming areas.
"The comparative lack of sheep in America accounts for widespread insomnia!" Hah hah ha ha ha! If you count the legs aand divide by four, you'll fall asleep faster!
@@dperry19661 History’s Largest pig was Big Bill, a Poland-China breed who weighed in at a hefty 1,157 kg (2,552 lb) and was 2.74 m (9 ft) long. This huge hog stood 1.52 m (5 ft) to his shoulder, about the same as an average-height 12-year-old girl. A lot of bacon. I saw a few in Virginia that were close. Not household pets.
One type of farming in the USA that is seldom mentioned and almost never included in "crop" definitions: tree farming. The northern tier of states have extensive parts of them that are commercial forests. Every 20 years or so, a crop of trees is taken off them. For my own state, Maine, nearly three quarters of the state looks like wild forest to the uneducated eye. But actually, that's all timberland, where trees are being grown for commercial sale.
I was thinking same thing when I looked at Maine and the Pacific Northwest.
I always love watching the semis with Christmas trees heading south on 95... Always puts me in the Christmas mood.
It is a money crop here in ETX. From here to Alabama, possibly Georgia too. Mostly Pine trees.
@@JamesThompson-ol3eu I remember back in the seventies anti logging nut jobs came down into the piney woods and started jabbering about cutting all the “old growth” forests. They left pretty quick when someone pointed out that all those trees were about 20 years old and Texas had more trees then when white people first came into the area. They thought it takes 100 years to grow a tree to marketable size here because it takes that long in northern CA, OR, and WA. Apparently that didn’t think it was very nice that we laughed at them. They went away till they decided the damn owls were endangered and came back.
The UK also has a tree farming-i believe the UKs forests are managed by something called the Forestry Commission, which aims to maintain a balance between a viable commercial forestry industry, and maintenance/expansion of UK woodlands and forests.
The UK is apparently 13% forest-which doesnt sound much, and indeed isnt compared to what it was a few hundred years ago, but apparently its a rapidly increasingly number.
"Nine Bushels for Every Brit" sounds like it could be a song.
Sounds like a 1960s folk song.
Those are grain bins which hold grain, a lot of people call them silos but silos hold silage ( fermented grass )
I was waiting to hear what the second post popular is that we’re obsessed with, corn being the first, and a commercial cut off your word “rectangles”... classic! Corn and rect... angles!
I live in Alabama right now and it's corn, peanuts, cotton, pine trees, cows and most likely soybean lol I grew up in Tennessee/Kentucky and it is tobacco, corn and cows. I am sure there is more but that was what was mainly in my area. God I miss the tobacco curing season. Smells so good!
That dry British humour just gets me a chuckle.😂😂😂😂😂😳
Bye the way, I have 11 sheep on the farm here.
I would argue there is actually a difference between silos and grain bins, and what you actually showed was a grain bin.
If sheep wasn't so common I wouldn't have to eat it every week. I live in Texas so I think we just have more than other states and I eat goat a lot.
Nebraska has more cows than people. It’s the leading in cow to human ratio. Nebraska cow to human ratio is 4 cows for every one human. Iowa is leading state for corn production, but it’s mostly used for ethanol.
You need to look out west with the massive amount of circle irrigation. Circles everywhere. That is weird from the air.
Hey Lawrence! How do Brits find sheep in tall grass!?!?! Delightful!
I grew up in Missouri lots of corn and soybeans. And its a yellow-green kinda color. I drove through some farm country in Quebec once. Greenest valley I've ever seen. Felt the way people describe Ireland.
First time I’ve watched. Love it. I am American and laughed and laughed. Not easy to do in US right now. 😭😤but this and you are great. Thank you.
What Britain calls farms we call large gardens.
The reason that most of Britain is farmland and the US has huge areas that are NOT farmland is obvious when you think about climate. Britain is in its entirety in the Temperate Zone and an island and so will definitely have all the rain necessary for the land to be naturally fertile. Much of the US is either plains or desert and thus not enough water falls all year round to keep the vegetation lively.
Most of the corn grown in the U.S. is not the corn you'd eat, it is field corn, it has a very high starch content and is used in industry as fillers, or for certain plastics, or as ingredient in large animal feeds.
Or ethanol
Or corn syrup.
Corn for all the cows
or silage
@@madisonbauling5928 Typically they feed grass, hay, oats, and such to cows, not corn. Pigs eat a lot of corn though, they eat a mixture of corn, oats, etc. Depends on the farm really.
We have a family farm in Indiana, every year we rotate between soybeans and corn. I saw a tomato field one time and I didn’t know what to do with myself.
10 years ago we were driving through the melon-growing area of far western Indiana at planting time... it took a while to figure out what was going on. I've also seen bright green waves of mint plants in lake country.
Were you cornfuzzed?
Make tomato sauce!
This year, the farms near our house were all planted with roses.
@@cathipalmer8217 I find that fact somewhat disturbing
The thing about all that corn is that something like 70% is not for human consumption. It's for ethanol fuel and animal feed. Fun fact. Cheers! DonP
He mentioned #2 is soybeans, which is also predominantly used as livestock feed.
And then a good chunk of the 30% left is turned into High fructose corn syrup that is in almost everything.
🤬
The corn fed to livestock, is for livestock that are raised for human consumption - so it's really a distinction without a difference. Also, the ethanol industry produces distillers grains which are livestock feed, so about 1/3 of the output of the ethanol plants is still for food. Same thing with corn syrup, corn gluten feeds are a livestock feed that is produced as a by-product of making corn sweeteners.
@@jeffp3415 No, there is an actual difference. This Midwesterner dares you to eat an entire cob's worth of Field Corn. Will it kill you? No. Will you like it? Probably not.
(Sweet Corn=good for corn-on-the-cob, everyday human consumption. Field Corn= good for animals, and chemical/manufacturing of syrups, fuel, etc. )
Another fun fact: you can eat sweet corn, straight from the field, just pick a cob, shuck it, and chow down. Same principle as an apple tree. It is hungry, you want a snack, and there is a sweet treat.
If you're having problems picturing how much a bushel is just remember that it's the same as 4 pecks and that should clear things up for ya.
since 1824 a bushel has been defined as 8 imperial gallons, or 2,219.36 cubic inches (36,375.31 cubic cm). In the United States the bushel is used only for dry measure. The U.S. level bushel (or struck bushel) is equal to 2,150.42 cubic inches (35,245.38 cubic cm) and is considered the equivalent of the Winchester bushel, a measure used in England from the 15th century until 1824. A U.S. level bushel is made up of 4 pecks, or 32 dry quarts. Two bushels make up a unit called a strike.
Just trying to help....
I get 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
How many Roman modia would that be?
Is this a standard bushel or a country bushel?
@@homerfantastic Nah, I think you're mixing metaphors. What yer referencing thar be the city block and the country mile.
“Britain’s green pastures are generally greener” jokes on you I’m colorblind it’s all blue
Is the blue you see the same blue I see? A friend in school was color blind way back in the day, late 70s. I asked him the same question, and to pick a red crayon. He picked out a light blue. Funny thing, he makes a load of money painting fish trophys. How he does it, I have no clue.
Although the statement isn't at all factual.
smylebutta7250 Look up tritanopia ;)
@@ducewags generally colorblindness only applies to one or two primary colors being seen wrong. most other colors are seen as most other people see them. though there are , like everything else on the planet, exceptions to this
@@guywells9455 very true, and some exceptions can be things that boggle the mind. I have a maternal cousin who was born with achromatopsia. A rare fluke, as there is no known cause for it in his case. (no tumors, no trauma, no genetic predisposition, "just one of those things" according to the doctor.) Yet he memorized all the shades of gray that he could, which allows him to carry on with relatively few hiccups.
In Texas, the mild winter means being able to get in two crops, even three, selected carefully. Winter wheat or sorghum withe feed corn or cotton afterward are common to see. And the rapid-boll cotton now commonly used goes from green to leafless purple at the end of its season.
Also, the corn crop is actually two crops. There's sweet corn for human consumption, and feed corn, which is used for animal feeds and industrial applications (like ethanol). Modern feed corn varieties actually stop making chlorophyll and look all dried up as they focus all energy on ear production.
And don't forget - that winter wheat is often used to fatten calves ...
Not so mild now!
And this winter?
You might be specifically referring to what corn is typically grown in Texas, but there's a lot of variety to corn, there's something like 30 thousand varieties of corn, most of which fit into several categories, sweetcorn, popcorn, flint corn, flour corn, and of course the most widely grown dent/field corn, while almost all field corn is used as animal feed/fuel/industrial use, lots of food are made from dent corn, anything with cornmeal, corn syrup, corn starch are made from field corn
Yeah hard grain corn is the most common grain in our diets by a mile due to its cheapness and ability to be transformed into so many things. You can make it into a sugar replacement, after all. Nobody thinks about how much corn they're eating when they drink a soda.
just saying, theres a town in Kansas called Lawrence
There is a Lawrence Massachusetts too!
@@troubledwaters7441 which is not a coincidence, 12 families from Massachusetts who were strong abolitionists moved to Kansas and founded Lawrence KS.
@@jtilton5 oh wow I didn't know that!
@@troubledwaters7441 it's one of those odd little facts I learned when I was in HS and had to learn Kansas History to graduate (Also we learned why we don't like Missouri)
I'm from Lawrence, KS. Named after Amos Lawrence (who was from Massachusetts). Which is why the main drag is Massachusetts Street
You really missed a big difference, the American homestead of a quarter section of land. Free land which attracted millions of Europeans to immigrate to the USA. Google Maps satellite image shows the grid of square mile roads, a quarter section is a quarter of a square mile, 160 acres. Even in the more arid areas of the Great Plains you see the quarter sections irrigation crop circles as well. Why 160 acres? During the 19th century that was about as large a farm a farmer could plow with a horse which provided the farmer a middle class income. Check out Kansas. Check out the Homestead Act...
section town range
That’s especially obvious if you do a fly over of western Nebraska as well. The high plains don’t get a whole lot of rain, so there is far greater need of irrigation in those parts of the country.
You are correct but overstate the abilities of a horse and plow somewhat. The popular saying after the Civil War was that each farm family needed "40 acres and a mule" to get by. One farmer with one mule and a single-bottom steel plow could plow 40 acres in the month or so he had to get his crops planted in the spring. In the late nineteenth century, most family farms were 40 acres, or a quarter of a quarter section. After World War I, gasoline tractors came into use and farms began to grow. When I grew up in 1950s Wisconsin, most family farms were 120 acres, consisting of interlocking "L" shapes made up of three 40-acre parcels. A full quarter section (160 acres) was considered a large farm. Today, all Wisconsin family farms are "corporate" farms; most have gotten rid of their livestock and just raise crops; and many are over 1000 acres.
@@darkjedi74 there are also some underground lakes in parts of the Midwest so I've read.
So much wrong.with this statement. Not enough time.
A lot of fields in Japan are oddly shaped too due to them being so old going back further in history when more people were farming smaller plots and the plots usually followed the natural contours of the land. After the war the government redrew the lines for some plots to make them square and more accessible to machinery, but you still see lots of small oddly shaped family plots too.
Probably a similar story in the UK tbf
I grew up on one of those 'rectangle fields' farms you were flying over in Kansas. Especially west of the Appalachians our farms and fields (and many of our States, counties, and townships) are laid out as a result of surveying in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In Britain, many of the farm and field boundaries were established long before surveying was a thing.
Me too!
Hi Jovan. Surveying isn't a new thing. The Romans were surveying in England with accurate instruments 2,000 years ago. Some archived English boundary maps go back at least 1,000 years.
In Illinois the township system is based on sections, each section being 1 square mile (640 acres), with 36 sections in a township. Many of the sections were laid out with roads as the boundaries.
Just as an aside, amerindian boundaries were generally streams or other geographic formations.. The township system cut these areas up. The oldest cemeteries along with an office of sorts were located in a pattern.generally with a spring. you look for a strangely shaped section.
English fields and pasture shapes often go as far back as the Saxons (Vikings).
Our homesteaded farm here in Missouri has been in the family for about 200 years now. We had sheep briefly but my forebearers really disliked them and we've rarely raised them since. Fields even as recently as the 1960s were much more like those in the UK. As machinery grew in size, dividing fence rows were removed and fields became more rectangular. The 30 acre field closest to my house was once divided into 7 separate fields. You couldn't fit a modern combine into those spaces. Modern planting and harvesting equipment is massive.
That homestead should be broken up along with all of the old farms and sold to new individuals who actually want to farm. They are half of why we have a housing crisis in the country.
@@freewilly1193 your definitely a commie at heart with that sort of thinking going on in your head
@@freewilly1193 better dead than red
@@freewilly1193 Bro nobody wants to farm. The reason we have a housing crisis is because rich people keep buying all the property and renting it out.
Interesting my relatives farms in the 60’s and 70’s had very large rectangular individual plots. I believe they had three that totaled 1200 acres.
Unnecessary wearing of a baseball cap indoors proves this geezer has integrated well . 😂👌
His spelling mistakes as well show that.
When I was a kid my English Aunt Ella came to visit for a while. She stayed with family members in various states. When she was in Western Massachusetts, we took her on drives around Historic Deerfield and the Berkshires. She saw the gracious homes with huge lawns. She was amazed. She remarked “All that land, and not a sheep on it!” She thought it was wasteful to grow grass, only to mow it to keep it short...sheep would do the job for free AND you would get wool or mutton!
Mutton.....
There are few things as disgusting. Explains a lot about the odd shit the Brits eat if they think mutton is edible.
Goats are better.
@@leftyeh6495 Its not bad it is a little strong for most people, but even I wouldn't eat the stomach.
@@bond1j89 goats don't eat grass, but they love rose bushes. They're browsers, not grazers.
@@bond1j89 one thing that I have heard about goats is that if/when they eat grass they eat it right down to the roots, where as sheep only eat the green bits on top.
So the grass will grow back after sheep, but less so after goats.
I don't know any goats personally, so I can't verify that I'm correct.
7:20 those aren't silos, they're grain bins.
That’s exactly what I thought.
I never realized that the two terms weren't interchangeable. Thanks for making me do some googling.
lcdmcorp.com/grain-flow-101/whats-the-difference-between-silos-and-grain-bins/
Yes , a silo holds silage, animal feed.
@@paulwoodman5131 grain bins hold animal feed too. It's just a matter of construction and how they're emptied. Grain bins empty from the bottom, silos empty from the top. Along with some other differences. Tower silos are being replaced with bunkers left and right though, easier to maintain. You'd only build a tower silo now if you really didn't have the room for a bunker.
Absolutely correct.
A lot of Ohio farmers seemed to switch from soybeans to wheat, due to the China trade wars. I do love the look of a wheat field. It is so pretty.
Man i haven't been back in a while. That would be neet to see. My family down in Tennessee grew grain for the livestock but that was only a couple acres or so
As a Kansas native " the most boring state in the Union", thanks for mentioning us. (We build lots of airplanes too)
Just Some Guy Are you from Wichita? I love our boring state. 😁
Newton KS myself
We also has some of the highest taxes in the country
And yet I always think of Kansas as being divided into "the part that looks like Missouri" and "the part that looks like Colorado."
Cathi Palmer I wish we had parts that looked like Colorado! And Missouri for that matter. 😂 We have some areas of rolling hills (the Flint Hills are beautiful) and a few modest rock formations. Pretty stuff in my opinion but nothing like the Rocky Mountains or the Ozarks. And definitely not as wooded as either state except real close to Missouri or near rivers. I may be in the minority but think the wide open spaces and hilly areas are quite nice and perfect for farming and ranching of course. 😁
Poor Uncle Toby. Think he will ever get a chance to speak for himself?
You'll see those stone walls and weirdly shaped plots in New England. Makes sense.
The whole cows/cattle thing is because we have both vast dairy farms and huge cattle ranches. Totally different beasts.
No we make stone walls because we have to get all the f-ing rocks off the field.
I am from a farming area in Idaho. We don't get enough rain for crops and as a result of the sprinkler systems, many of our fields are circles.
I guess you live in Southern Idaho? Because I live in South East Idaho.
Big potato fan here, keep 'em comming!!!
That caught my interest when I flew over them. In the ag areas on CA they either flood irrigate or they have big irrigation pipes in wheels that you move across the field.
Oh. You're one of those draining the Ogallala natural underground reservoir? Faster than nature can refill it? Be sure and keep and eye on those estimated water levels and sell before it's exhausted.
yeah im a farmer from an area where we dont have to destroy the earth to make money. You should try it sometime.
"I was busy flying a plane and didn't have time for facts."
Aaaand, Lawrence drops the British sarcasm if the day m 😂
And drops in a mighty fine humble-brag as well. 🤗
@@Raiche58 He wasn't flying a REAL plane, so no brag, humble or otherwise.
@@acmeopinionfactory8018 How do you define a "real plane"?
@@KaiHenningsen One that doesn't exist in your laptop's imagination.
acmeopinion factory
🤔...
I drive one of them big rigs from coast to coast, after 22 years of doing this job I'm still amazed at how many cattle ranches we have !! I can't even go a whole day without seeing some cattle,i love em anyhow. Often I will wave at them and and yell "Hello cow boo's"
The party isn't over until the cows come home.
Good thing winters almost here then they'll be moved back to stock pens for the calving season so the babies don't freeze to death and be protected from predators here in ND then we can get the party over with XD
Which they do every evening at sundown...
The farmland in the Finger Lakes of NY is on rolling hills, it's beautiful.
Most of the farmland on the east coast is like that
@@patrickmartin3322 -- The Finger Lakes terrane [sic] is different from the rest of the Eastern US. It's glaciated, with interlake hilltops between broad lake valleys, and other areas having a number of glacial features that give distinctive rolling hills.
as is southern Indiana and southern Ohio big parts of Missouri and Arkansas. A slim sliver from on both the seat and west of the Alleghanies from PA to Alabama.
Same here in central Pa
Same here in far northwest Illinois
I'll point out the obvious. 2 mountain ranges and a desert take up land volume.
...forgive me if i'm wrong, but didn't you make the desert by overfarming?
@@Drengade The Great Basin, Mohave, Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts area all natural deserts in the USA. Unfortunately we do suffer from desertification, the cause is mostly from over grazing rather than over farming, though it certainly lends its hand.
@@Drengade no. Most of our desserts are natural.
@@patrickprafke4894 I dunno. All that Cool Whip doesn't seem very natural to me.
@@notrappaport5340 hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PREACH!
Darn auto correct. I didn't catch it. Love the humor though!
RE: the map at 1:58. Much of the dark green color in the Great Plains states is actually rangeland that's never been broken out, not farmland.
Also, those things at 7:18 are bins for storing grain, not silos. Silos are filled with green whole plant material (corn, alfalfa, grass, etc.) to ferment into silage, which if properly done in airtight conditions pickles itself with lactic acid.
Ok, that got lost in the pond too. In Aus/UK a silo is a cylindrical bulk storage structure. Steel or concrete, a few tonnes to as big as you like.
@@stur4622 The difference isn't the shape -- if you see a big concrete cylinder on a farm it very probably is a silo -- but a silo is used for silage, meaning something that is pickled/fermented, which requires moisture and preventing exposure to air. Silage is used for animal feed. Dry grain, on the other hand, is not stored in silos but rather grain bins like in the photo in this video.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 That's not necessarily true. Silos are very commonly used for bulk storage without silage all the time. Basically any bottom-unloading silo(which are quite common in the US) or any large community silo aren't likely to be used for silage.
but yes, those were grain bins.
@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 my point is that in the rest of the English speaking world we use the term 'silo' as you would 'bin'.
Could be 100t on-farm, could be the squillion-tonne regional grain depot, could be a large manufacturer storing anything dry/granular. On farm could be grain, or fertiliser. Almost always top loading, generally with a funnel shaped base with angle dependent on what's being stored. Apologies if our etymology is wrong but we call it a silo.
Fwiw silage where I'm from (AU) is generally plastic wrapped bales, or bales in a plastic-lined pit/trench. Pre-plastic would have just been in the ground covered with earth.
@@stur4622 "silage where I'm from (AU) is generally plastic wrapped bales, or bales in a plastic-lined pit/trench."
I think bunker silos (basically above ground pit silos) are the norm in the US today. Plastic wrapped bales are used, too, but I think they'd commonly be called baleage. There are plenty of the tall cylindrical silos (like you see on all sorts of product imagery next to a red barn) still around, but they seem to rarely be used any more.
Dry stone walls were common around fields in the northeast US. However, a lot of those farms, like my family's in Pennsylvania, went out of business over the 20th century as it became far more economical to farm the larger, flatter fields in the west.
The prevalence of maize (corn) in the US diet, even indirectly via livestock feed, leads to a detectable difference in the human body of Carbon 14 (IIRC) and with history in the hair. A friend was one of the chemists involved in the study and one day popped into my office door (I worked at the same university) to say, "Hi! Can I have some of your hair?" for part of that study.
You will see a distinct difference in farmland developed prior to Civil War and Post-Civil War. The further from Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, the more rectangular the plots are.
Yep. We also have very rocky soil in the northeast, which is not great for general farming. Raising animals like chicken and cows and in churn, dairy, along with orchards and berry growing are far more common.
Yup, I live rural PA and there are still some stone walls scattered around, but they're usually abandoned or on state lands. They're not in my area, but elsewhere in the state they are still some stone cairn-like structures, too.
Jane Ryan-Douglas They didn’t need much because the population was tiny.
Relatively tiny I meant.
My mom grew up in a tiny town in Minnesota that relied heavily on farming and fishing. Her uncle owned a farm where he raised cattle and grew corn. I remember visiting that farm many years ago, and I miss going up to that little town. My grandpa sold his house about 7 or 8 years ago and moved down to Florida after my grandma died.
When I was a kid, I lived in Texas. My family had a friend who owned a small farm and we'd visit frequently. When my siblings and I had too much energy, she'd put us to work wrangling chickens or herding goats.
Before that, up in New York, I had a first grade field trip to an ostrich farm.
Now I live in Nebraska, coincidentally about two hours from where my great-great grandpa ended up when he came over from a German colony in Russia in the late 1800s. I don't know any farmers now. I wish I did. I'm moving further into the city eventually to be closer to the hospital, but I would love to wander around on some farmland while my health permits it. There's a farmer who lives just beyond my backyard, but they don't really mingle with us suburban folks. I do get to see and hear them working the corn and soybean fields several times a year though.
Go ask. Make friends. It’s fun.
@@nathanielkidd2840 That was my thought, most farmers I know are more than happy to bend an ear as long as you aren't interrupting planting, harvesting, or other time sensitive tasks. Just don't trespass the crop or livestock fields and be friendly.
They probably don’t mingle much because they are busy, but most will be friendly, just try.
No public footpaths across fields in the US.
I made a point about not having stiles here, and it follows from yours. Thanks!
One of my favorite things about the UK
@@genevievenoble8120
Haha, my friend, a little Scottish grandmother , almost got me arrested twice in one weekend with her "Scots can walk anywhere" attitude
cjpenning, is that what was going on at 9:22? I was wondering if that was the hiking footpaths I've heard the U.K. is famous for.
Are they usually that heavily populated or was this maybe a special event in the area?
@@crazypiratesquirrel3038 I'm not sure what was going on in the video, but the UK footpaths I'm familiar with are just paths the public has a right to use at any time. They cut right across some fields, and the farmers go about their business of plowing and planting like normal.
The wonderful thing is the fact that American farmers make up less then 3% of the population and feed all of us plus 20% of the world as well! The only other comparable country is Canada, though they have a problem with a short growing season thus they import citrus fruits from California and Florida.
Australia?
@@marcusfox2443 California, a state with 40 million people grows more food then Australia a country with 25 million people. New York state, pop 20 million, produces as much wine and food as Australia!
@@bullettube9863 but not corn!
@@sherrieburcham6287 No not corn, as corn or maize as Europeans call it, can be harvested in cold weather. I remember harvesting corn in November with snow on the ground!
the Netherlands is #2 in agri/horicultural export on the world, population 17 million,
0,6% of the population are farmers.
the low number is explained by them using high tech tools and methods.
the export industry is worth roughly 90 billion euros annually, more than half of the USA's exports (~140 billion), 64% to be more precise.
(the USA is about 230 times bigger in land size, and population about 22-23x)
14x the amounts produced per capita. (in value) the numbers are mind-boggling.
therefor this country of 17 million beats Australia's total production by a near 50%, with just its exports.
in terms of production per capita, or production to land mass ratio, we can't even see the USA in the rear view mirror, let alone canada, so no, not only is Canada not the only comparable country, it's not even remotely close to being 2nd in any metric, the numbers just aren't there.
You should check out South African farms. I noticed a lot with round shapes. Apparently there is some irrigation rig that goes in a circle. But they also have an overabundance of sheep. My in-laws thought all Americans were wealthy because we eat so much pork, chicken and beef, but little sheep. They couldn't believe it when i explained how pricey and hard to find lamb can be in the US vs. Beef. Now my nephews want to move here and raise cows!
"irrigation rig that goes in a circle"
Yes, it's called a center pivot. They exist in America too, but they will only make the obvious circle shape when the surrounding land is so dry that nothing else can grow there.
Like from the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma, western Kansas and Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and Wyoming, and the Dakotas.
@@brycepatties Explains why I saw it in SA. The place we were at only gets rain in November and December.
@@brycepatties I moved to ETX 3.5 years ago and was astonished to find center pivot operations. It appears mostly dairies that grow their own feed stuff. There is alot of rain fall here - NorthEast Tx - these properties are at the edge of NorthEast TX but the different in color is quite apparent. Really surprised when so much rain fall is here.
Center pivots in density go from Northern Texas to Southern Alberta in Canada following the eastern rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
It's causing problems because it's using up all the ground water.
We don't call them cows in the US, they're called double cheeseburgers.
Bushel always reminds me of my daughter’s favorite song to sing at night before bed...🎶”I love you a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap...” 🎶 It’s from Guys and Dolls. All sorts of crazy units of measurement in there 🤣
You have to love Guys and Dolls!
Awww-I used to sing that song to my sons when they were boys ❤️
@@msg4925 my daughter’s favorite part is the doodle ooldie doo doo part. 😬
I’ve been humming that tune to myself since Laurence’s first utterance of the word!
7:25 "Sending crops into space" made me laugh-from the other side of story. I live US Midwest. Growing up, I always thought it funny that so many si-fi shows built their ships/rockets in or out of silos.
You almost can't go out your door in Montana without seeing a cow. Or, at least be within 10 miles of seeing one. The top crop export from this state is wheat. It's beautiful to see the massive fields of gold in the breeze.
Indeed Wheat Montana is where we buy our wheat in 25 or 50 lb bags.
@@suem6004 Yeah, I pick up the, (is it 12 grain cereal?) there along with wheat and flour in bulk. Call ahead and they will put it in a storage container with O2 absorbers for long term storage. I have to stop there on the way to Bozeman from Helena just to get their ham and swiss pastry. 😍
I can't go out my door here in IL without hearing chickens 😂
@@candicehoneycutt4318 LOL, I gave up the chickens. Mountain lion tore the whole coop down. All I could do was stand on the upper deck and watch. If I had to I could set up again, but that was enough to back me off them for a while. I try to drive straight through Illinois. My bank cards won't work there and I have to gas up in Iowa then get to another gas station in Indiana. Problems with too many stolen numbers via the processing companies in Illinois. Which I'm sure is a huge problem in the Chicago area. But, yeah, lots of chickens there.
Rhiahl There's a lot of big critters out here, but not too many mountain lions thankfully. I don't live on a farm, but a lot of people in my rural town raise chickens. We're not really supposed to have cows in city limits, but somebody has one that occasionally escapes and hangs out at the gas station for some unexplained reason lol.
I've never heard of that happening down here in southern IL.
"Where's the beef?!" from an old Wendy's commercial from the'80s
In the portion of the US where I come from, the no.1 cash crop is "the Devil's lettuce".
I call it Smiley Weed.
Wildwood weed, wacky tobacy
Green corn ?
@@christelheadington1136 "One puff of that wildwood weed and the next thing you know, you're just wandering around behind the little animals."
And no, don't store your stash in an oregano jar---- the Narcs knew about that in the 60s.
@Lost in the Pond You may have another video here: Those trees around all the fields you saw, they have a reason they are there. Look up "The Dust Bowl" I doubt it was taught when you were a lad.
I suggest you search for "Cows With Guns", it's awful, but funny.
Still waiting for a full realization of "Chickens With Choppers".
Enjoyed your video and your perspective! As an American, our relationship with agricultural farming and beef cattle go way back in American history. Please research the history of the longhorn cattle, brought to North America by the Spaniards, creating vast wild herds of cattle. Also research the history of Western cattle drives, such as the Chisholm trail to name a few. Finally, research the "Mason County Wars" of the state of Texas, which involved the sheep ranchers vs. cattlemen. Which boiled down to the use of barbed wire (sheep ranchers) and the open range used by cattlemen. This war was both bloody and lawless, one of my ancestors was a Texas Ranger at the time, and was involved in the final arrest of the corrupt Mason county sheriff. Thus there is a reason that beef is still king in America, its as America as the Cowboy!
I'm in the epicenter of corn, soybean and pork production, Iowa. It's true that the biggest share of corn goes into livestock feed or ethanol production. I don't know if it's still true, but at one time Iowa was second behind Texas in the number of miles of gravel roads. The roads were needed to move crops to the transportation hubs and back then there were thousands of small family farms.
Square plots, odd-shaped plots - we were sober when we laid ours out.
I am blown away by the Comments here. Incredible interest and knowledge about land and farming history. Thanks one & all!!!
Yeah I was thinking the same. I'm wondering about the average age of those with all that knowledge. It would be a shame if it all gets lost or no one cares in 10-15 years!
The first time my uncle saw the WTC twin towers he seriously said those are huge grain elevators. Everyone thought he was joking but no he was serious. He really thought they were grain elevators. Yeah he was a farmer in Ohio and Kentucky but he knew he was in New York City. He had left the Midwest as he served in WWII in Europe. It's a funny family story now.
Ben Carson, the "brain surgeon" insists the pyramids are grain silos. Yours is a funny story, his is a sad one.
@@deadfreightwest5956 Dr. Carson's thought would fit with "seven fat years and seven lean years - maybe they capped them when no longer needed, don't know, never heard him say that. He's pretty smart though.
had to be passing thru way later than WWII - they were built in the 70s
@@deadfreightwest5956 and yours is an ignorant one, Bless it.
The WTC twin towers look like the boxes the Empire State and Chrysler buildings came in to observers on Long Island.
I live in North Missouri and yes cattle do out number us but to be fair we like our burgers there are a lot of hogs in the US as well you got get bacon some how.
I was in the north of Wales during lambing season in 2008. I'll never forget it. I was able to go to a farm and got to hold the little lambs. They are so sweet! And the dogs that farmers use are the smartest dogs you can imagine, and so trained and controlled! They are amazing! I do love America for so many reasons, but I will say that we are woefully short on sheep. And thatched roof cottages.
That sounds like a dream! Were the dogs border collies? My favorite breed. And oh how I yearn for a thatched roof cottage.
@@nikkireigns Yes, border collies! Wonderful dogs! You and I share a love of thatched roofs. :-)
If you go to an old fashioned pub in sheep Country you will often find at least one and often more boarder collies curled up in front a log fire in the bar! (this is one reason the bar side of a traditional countryside pub has a flagstone floor and plain wooden chairs - most pubs will have a seperate lounge side with comfier chairs, carpet, and if they serve food tables for that food)
Come out some time to Maine and you can hold a kid (baby goat).
That flight simulator is a poor representation of what farms look like. The average farm is much bigger in the U.S..
I think if you flew over the east coast you would find that the farms resemble British farmes more. The boundaries tend to follow the terrain ub gukkt abd mountainous terrain. However, whe we expanded through the Mid West and the Plains, the land is fairly flat and the land was surveyed before being divvied up. especilly in the Plains where it was given out by the governmen as part of the Homestead Act.Thus the land was handed out in "quarter section, 160 acres (1/4 of a square mile or 640 acres) Further, there seems to have been a tendency to deetermine location of a farmer in terms of quarters of the quarter section. Ask the farmer's wife where he was and she would likely say he was in the north forty (acres) although that would likely actually be either the Northwest or Northeast forty.
@@surlyogre1476 Typo fixed
Thanks
Check out Louisiana - field squares are totally different shapes to the rest of America, because FRANCE! (and history :)
Here in the US especially in more arid western states pivot crops meaning the sprinkler pivots from the center of a circle and is not a rectangle are quite common. Also to think the Central Valley of California produces a significant amount of the US crops for such a small region
David Terry That’s because we have two growing seasons. We can produce twice a year
california has the advantage of being volcanically active in geological time and being a huge flood plain, not to mention the weather. the water is a bit iffy now but it's to there.
They actually started developing center-pivot irrigation systems that could cover the corners of square fields back in the 1970's.
ua-cam.com/video/ZIVyUlJFsZE/v-deo.html
Maridel Weaver it even seems like some crops can be harvested a third time especially in the southern San Joaquin Valley My grandparents harvested crops in Tulare county They had over a 100 fruit trees along several acres of other fruits and vegetables on their property in Madera I made money in the summer packing pears in Lake County I drove back and forth through the rice fields all the time Also in the same area during late summer the tomatoes through the Woodland area smells so bad
You will also find many circular fields in the US because they are irrigated central pivot irrigation systems, the water is drawn from an aquifer (unfortunately draining it faster than its replenished which will probably lead to an ecological disaster in the future)
Those circular fields are mostly in the far west unlike the block fields if the Midwest.
One thing I saw a while back was a Scotsman commenting on the differences between Scotland and America. One observation went something like, "You go from one end to another and you see the same rocks, trees, grass. Go to America and every few hours you can see a different landscape." This is true and explains a lot of the differences. I grew up in California and have lived in Oregon, Idaho, Missouri, Arkansas, and have been to most of the states. There are so many differences between those states and my current home in Iowa that my mother-in-law, that just moved here from California, feels like she is in a different country. When I drove out here towing a trailer for her, I went from California cropland in the San Joquin Valley, where just about everything is produced- but not much corn- lots of oranges, of course. Over Tehachapi and down into the desert. Passing through Las Vegas and heading into Utah, the scenery is quite varied, but still, flatish until you get into Utah and see the wonderous colors in Zion National Park. This leads you over the Rockies to Denver, and every mile has something new to rubberneck. (Is that work in the British lexicon?) After the descent to Denver, you encounter lots and lots of Midwest farmland.
To understand the differences, you need to understand the varied weather and humidity. Humidity is something I never considered for the first 3 decades of my life, having never experienced it. We moved to Arkansas in 1994 during December and when summer rolled around I thought I would die! Back home you had 110-degree heat, but all dry. A cheap swam cooler kept you cool and was affordable. In Arkansas and the midwest states, you can't use one, as it causes the walls to become damp like they are sweating. (I talked to somebody that tried it!) So lots of window units here, unless you can afford central air. But we have green all year round until it is killed off by below freezing temps. Back home you had a week or two of green in spring, then it all dies- you can see why the great concern about fires there. I grew up watching borate bombers go over our house, combating wildfires. In fact, the whole place was a tinderbox, and when responding to local calls Police always scan the crowds for one who has a history of arson. Yes, they light fires to see the excitement they can cause.
What was my point? Oh, the differences in crops, colors, etc. I think it has to do with humidity and all that. The corn here is awesome, like nothing I ever had back home. We have lots of hog ranches, too. But no oranges. We ship them bacon and corn, they send us oranges and melons, or something like that. And I know from Basil Fawlty that Brits get orange juice in a can. We can, too. O is made from the smaller, less sellable oranges. I know, because I worked in an Orange Packing House during the summer. Out here in Iowa I would have tasseled corn, or fed hogs. So there you go, highly researched and ready for public consumption.
P.S. our sheep would be packing, so don't push us, man.
California alone - driving 80 from San Fran to Reno (4 hrs) - You'll see a wide variety of environments, agriculture, city, and forest. Go north to south, and you'll get even more.
Canola is Canadian, they changed the name from rapeseed for marketing. Lamb is to D****ED expensive here, I love it, but can't afford it.
Perhaps rapeseed could make a comeback under conservative government? In the US, I mean.
Noted with displeasure. The lamb from New Zealand tastes like it was washed out for a week or so. Finding mutton is impossible.
I tried mutton once and it was the most disgusting thing I ever tasted. Smelled bad too.
@@LG123ABC -My Husband was like that, but I found out that his Grand mother had taken some out of the freezer and left it to thaw way too long in the kitchen sink. Then we moved near my Sister.who was raising sheep, when he taste fresh leg of lamb he changed his mind. I've never had mutton.
@@christelheadington1136 Lamb is a... well, lamb. Mutton is an older sheep, tougher and more gamey. Lamb to eat directly, and mutton for stew and stuff you cook the sh*t out of.
"Again! An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain"
You should read some of the history between sheep vs cattle, especially in Texas. The are whole pages of ranch feuding between cattle and sheep ranchers. Basically, cattle ranchers wanted more of the green pastureland for cattle and would start shoot outs to get rid of sheep. Unfortunately, the cattle ranchers won.
I used to sit and listen to some old west Texas Ranchers talk. One of the old guys raised sheep and the other Old-Timers were Cattlemen. They would go back and forth over sheep versus cattle and Shepherds versus Cowboys. I always got a kick out of listening to them fuss. The old sheep Rancher would look over at me, the preacher, and ask, "Who did God call on when He needed something done? The answer's obvious, a Sheep man man."
stephanie rando, wow, you just jogged my memory. I vaguely recall something in my 9th grade history book about cattlemen vs. sheep men, but I think your post here goes into more detail than my textbook did!
More than anything the feuds had a whole lot to do with the fact that when out on pastureland, cattle eat by actually pulling up the grass with their tongues, as in a sort of grab almost like how we would grab it with our hands except they "grab" it by wrapping their tongues around it. This actually leaves some of the grass still in the ground to continue to grow. Grass maggots, err, sheep, actually bite the grass and do so so close to the root that it often not only left the grasslands damaged but left little if any grass tall enough for cattle to then come and feed on the same grounds. Whereas sheep could still feed after cattle grazed, there is no way for cattle to be able to feed after sheep have grazed. This is one of the reasons that sheep have often been used to keep lawns "mowed", including at the White House, (during WWII I think?). Anyway, just thought Id throw that out there.
A lot had to do with how they graze - cows graze about 4" above the ground, sheep graze right to the ground. The time for next growth was a problem. A combination of cows and sheep seems to work but you need fields to be able to move them to and if all the fields are in fallow, nobody eats.
I don’t think it’s unfortunate. Have you tasted mutton? Lol
That’s very interesting..
If you go to drier regions in the US you can also find lots of perfectly round farms. Center pivot irrigation. They're watered by a rotating sprinkler line. They're most common just east of the Rockies from the Northern Square part of Texas, through western Kansas and up to Southern Alberta in Canada.
Laurence talks about cows while camera pans over a pasture holding over ten steers (?) and two humans. (Giggle. Snort.)
As a Texan, I was really surprised how much of our land could be farmland.
Now it's how much farmland can be Bill Gates..
@@mrniceguy3750 Based response. Hang in there, these f’ers are going down.
I'm in rural Texas and most of my neighbors are cattle. I started a small herd of meat goats 3 years ago - makes for interesting conversations with beef ranchers.
Texas sucks and we'll all be glad when your state is uninhabitably dry.
You ignore the elephant in the room, which is that Brits call everything “corn”.
If there's a lost cause I can get behind it's returning the word corn to its proper (original) usage, meaning any and all cereal crops such as wheat, barley, oats, rice, rye etc.... a n d... maize.
Maize is a perfectly good word, so why did we stop using it?
@@blindleader42 Because...grain?
A very old Irish saying : "(The name of someone or something goes here) was looking as forlorn as a lost god in a cornfield".
The "lost god" being referred to was a pagan harvest idol made up many harvests before but it was no longer renewed yearly , signifying its help was no longer sought. However, disturbing it during any later harvest cleanups was not thought wise.
@@glowormrdr6183 What does that mean? "Because...grain". Or don't you have any idea what I said?
Or do you mean that grain is the right word for what the Brits call corn? No, because grain refers to much more than cereal crops and includes legumes like soy beans and chick peas, as well as several other families of crops.
Corn is a word that was generic and derived from German origins. When the first. English colonists arrived, they, logically enough, called the indigenous cereal Indian corn. In time, they just dropped the adjective and thus Americans use the word corn for that one grain.
Daddy, I spotted a hexagon, a nonagon, a heptagon, and irregular polygon, another irregular polygon...Zzzzzzzzzzzz
Between 1900 and about 1940, the USA had almost 7 million farms on 1.5 billion acres. Today we have only about 2 million farms on 900 million acres.
That sounds like the average farm today is much larger and produces dramatically more food per acre. We know the American population has increased significantly, and yet they're being fed from significantly fewer acres.
@@Tux.Penguin Yes, correct on all accounts. I think back in 1900 the average farm was about 100-something acres, and today the average is 400-something.
My dad grew corn the old fashioned way, like they did back in the 1950s. Today the farmers are WAY more efficient. I think we calculated it up once and my dad would have to go through the entire field 11 to 13 times in a season with a very slow and old tractor that burned a lot of diesel fuel. Today the farmers only go through a field I think 4 to 5 times with new equipment that just flies through. I think a farmer today can plant his 120 acre pivot field in about 4 hours. That used to take my dad 3 or 4 days to do. This saves a buttload of diesel fuel. Plus the new farming methods really save on water and land erosion.
I think I heard that in the past 20 years, farmers increased production of corn like 117% on the same area of land.
I would be willing to bet, that if they can crack the GMO code, they will be able to increase corn production dozens of times, while drastically reducing fuel, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and fertilizer use.
Sadly the majority of the family farms have been bought up by big corporations. It’s just not financially sustainable to run small family farms anymore. And the majority of small farm farmers still holding on are over 60 years old.
@@lacyLor It's not sad really. Mega farmers and corporations are far more efficient. Big corporate farmers buy new equipment and adopt new farming methods easily by hiring number crunchers to calculate the best way to increase productivity. Small farms run by old timers, just don't adopt new technologies and are more likely to drive very old machinery that guzzle the fuel. My dad was still using equipment from the 1960s, 50s, and 40s in the year 2000. Plus big corporate farmers use much bigger equipment that gets the job done much faster and using less fuel. If you calculate the amount of grain a new semi can haul, and then haul the same amount of grain with an old F350 truck, you will find that the truck will burn way more diesel than the semi does.
It’s sad to me that the way of life is being lost. Children growing up helping on the family farm, extended families and neighbors helping each other harvest, ect, all being lost to history. Farming is still happening in my family but many generations of tradition it will die out in one more generation, just like it will for many families. My father still farms because he loves it, he barely makes any profit.
Canola is a form of rapeseed that has been genetically modified to have lower levels of the toxic erucic acid, and therefore more suitable for human consumption (the oil). It also has lower amounts of glucosinolates, which gave rapeseed oil a bitter taste. The name "Canola" stems from the fact that it was developed in Canada (Canada + ola(oil)).
Iowa Great Plains, here. Currently experiencing what I call hayfever season. Now that the crops are out the air is filled with grain dust and all flavors of manure. Love it. 😉
Wait, you _eat_ the sheep?
I thought they were for wool.
They can do two things. Like how you can drink cows' milk and eat beef.
@@AdamYJ Yeah, but... _sheep_?
@@AdamYJ Those are seperate animals though/raised for two different things.
@@jonadabtheunsightly Trouble is that wool is not particularly valuable on the market, having mostly been replaced with cotton and synthetic fabrics, so keeping sheep for wool is not profitable. Therefore, sheep are kept primarily for meat, with the wool being essentially a byproduct of the process, since sheep have to be shorn anyway.
Oh yea, lamb is a popular, cultural favorite to prepare for Easter. Lamb is good. So is goat. I've also had rattlesnake, ground hog, opossum and alligator. I will essentially eat anything too slow or too stupid to get away from me. Avoid my house after the apocalypse. [Vegans. The other white meat. 😋🍖🍗🥓😨 ]
Laurence. There is a difference between arable and pasture land. US has more pasture land. But as you say, so few sheep. Wool is an important crop in Britain due to tradition. Not as much in the US. I do handspin so have my shepherds on speed dial.
Another difference is that your ancient fields are yet surrounded by stone but also but hedgerows. Lots and lots with cute hedge hogs.
British farmers also dress up as if going on a job interview instead of physical labor. The tweed jackets, wool waistcoats, collared shirt and tie. I think Americans would find that fascinating.
To be fair, Oliver Wendell Douglas wore a wool suit, white shirt, red vest and necktie every day as he worked his farmland, the Haney Farm. But that was in the 1960's.
The presence of large predators in North America made keeping sheep somewhat more difficult than cattle. At the same time widespread cotton production greatly reduced the need for wool which in turn drove up the price and decreased the availability of lamb and mutton, the two major byproducts of wool production. You’d only start to see sheep really catch on as some of the drier rangeland in the Western US was settled in the late 1800s by which time Americans were already largely meeting their meat demands with beef and pork.
Even in the Caribbean where some British colonies developed their own breeds of sheep these ran more towards hair sheep raised solely for meat as opposed to the wool sheep you’ll see in the UK.
@@johnbowers6258 Just as long as he could get his spaghetti on a stick!
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 Very informative! Thank you!
There were more cattle in the UK once, before that whole Mad cow debacle.
I'm almost 60 years old and I'm a Texan. I've only eaten lamb once in my life, at an Indian restaurant about 40 years ago. I can't recall how it tasted, probably spicey. lol! I eat beef probably at least 3 times weekly. Last night I had an awesome filet mignon! :)
Okay, both of you, SHUT UP! I had a bologna sandwich with a bowl of tomato soup for dinner!!
I can testify to all the cows. I’m from Idaho. The smell of manure is the smell of home. Some kids are obsessed with unicorns or LEGOs. Idaho kids are obsessed with cows.
One reason for the grid pattern, especially the further west you go is because in colonial times, the English metes and bounds were used as survey boundaries along the Atlantic Coast and spreading out to those areas settled by colonials. However, a system known as Township & Range began to be used in territories acquired some time after Texas joined the Union. In the state of Texas alone, you will find that most of the counties in East Texas are metes & bounds but as you get past the west of San Antonio and up north in the Panhandle you see the Township and Range.
The Land Ordinance Act of 1785 is the reason why the mid-west is so blocky. Settlements before then, such as in the South and the East coast, are not blocky since they were founded before then. Essentially, the West and Midwest were divided into townships, 6 miles squared, and each township was then subdivided into 36 1 square mile subdivisions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Ordinance_of_1785
Blocky divisions tend to yield straight roads which may be boring but are easier to memorize and navigate than the plate of spaghetti you find in eastern areas. Also, side note: if you divide a square mile into 16 portions, each one will be 40 acres, not just one.
@@Tux.Penguin well the Roman built strait road in the UK, and in London we abandoned them.
Paris has strait roads in a sort of starfish out form the Arc de Triumph. They were designed like this to put down dissent, which obviously didn't work too well. It also allowed the Nazi to roll into the centre of Paris with their Tanks largely unopposed, which wouls have been a tall order in London.
Since Texas land was originally handed out by Spain, it uses the Spanish Land Grant System. Doesn't use township/range grid.
Also the homestead act
Much of that planning took place under Thomas Jefferson!
He thought it would take a thousand years to settle the continent.
In his planning and legislation some part of every section was designated for schools, the idea being not that the schools would occupy it, but the land could be sold only if the money went to local schools.
When you come to California, come see the San Joaquin Valley’s farm land. A Completely different type of farmland from what you see in the Midwest.
How so? I looked at some photos, but didn't notice any striking differences.
I don’t know if it’s significantly different but the Central Valley (or California Plains) has a large number of orchards and vineyards compared to the Midwest.
The Midwest is not synonymous with the great plains. Kansas is so flat you can bounce of quarter of it, southern Indiana is so hilly you can barely cut sod.
Those same stone walls can be found in new england. One area in Connecticut where I grew up had walls everywhere although there was no longer any farmland to be found. They are interesting to see in the woods.
Very interesting. I loved my time serving in the USAF with the RAF and RAAF in the desert. Conversations about things like farming and just everyday life were so much fun.
You need to look up the history of the Cattle Ranchers and Sheep Hearders in the US. The Cattle business has been for over a hundred years in the US actively lobbying against sheep and shepherds as they often fight over the same land. This is a big reason we don't have as much demand for mutton in the US. Its a really intresting history to go into
Now i've heard it all. Conspiracy theories over cows and sheep. No one is stopping farmers from raising sheep. (Ks farmer).
It was in the western states, not yours. Easy to look up the facts. I remember hearing about it from my childhood.
@@lindasonnemaker4917 No, he says it is has been going on for the last 100 years and is presently going on. He isn''t quoting history. Pure bunk.
Possibly because the cattle faction alleges that sheep crop the forage plants too short. Among other reasons.
Sheep Wars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sheep Wars,[1][2] or the Sheep and Cattle Wars,[3][4] were a series of armed conflicts in the Western United States which were fought between sheepmen and cattlemen over grazing rights. Sheep wars occurred in many western states though they were most common in Texas, Arizona and the border region of Wyoming and Colorado. Generally, the cattlemen saw the sheepherders as invaders, who destroyed the public grazing lands, which they had to share on a first-come, first-served basis. Between 1870 and 1920, approximately 120 engagements occurred in eight different states or territories. At least 54 men were killed and some 50,000 to over 100,000 sheep were slaughtered
when the government forced the ethanol scam on us many farmers elected to just grow corn.
Many farmers just grew corn before, the difference is how quickly it turns into animal feed and the nutrient ratio of the corn when it reaches that point.
When I was a kid we spent summers working other people's ranches. I liked it, mainly because my job was "riding fence" (repairing fence-cattle are hard on fences).
When I was 12 my mother talked me and my brother into converting our 2.5 acres into a farm. Doesn't sound like much but it was a tremendous amount of work. Most miserable year of my life. It taught me to never pick on a farmer. Not only are they dedicated, they understand the soil in a way you can never fathom.
You need to talk to Michael Bloomberg!
28 years of farming and I'm wondering what kinda cattle your neighbor had to have you fixing fences every year...
@@brandondavis7777 Where I grew up, Herefords were the primary type of cattle. I don't know if it's only this type of breed, but they become obsessed with the grass on the other side of the fence. What they will do is line their body up, lengthwise, with the fence and lean until the fence post breaks. Keep in mind that when a ranch is measured in square miles, not acres, the fence posts are the pinon and mesquite trees that make up the scrub in New Mexico. All it takes is one fence post to open about 15 feet of fence, which is more than enough for several cows to get through. AND usually I would find them right at the broken spot in the fence, just munching away. I would get them back on the right side of the fence, mend the fence, then move on.
Interesting. I grew up in New England which has loads of dry stone walls all over the woods which used to all be farm land, mainly sheep grazing land, before the Midwest was colonized. There's still some sheep, but nowhere near what it used to be. Only the stone walls remain.
Im guessing theres no welsh blokes walking round in wellies in the middle of nebraska
Lol ! and remember ; you don't have to have mint sauce when you cook with British lamb 😂
@@esco5593 Why the ?? ? Sorry, are you saying you don't know what mint sauce is ? I can understand that you might not get the British joke.
You lost me at bushel....could you talk about kennings or pecks next time??
I love the U.K. It's a sentimental travel destination for me. I discovered this channel right after studying abroad in London. and it was like, so cool to hear a british person make the same comparisons i was making, albeit more informed.
As an inveterate Anglophile there is something I would like to recommend to you: "Alistair Cooke's America"
Cooke was a Blackpool lad who took a job with the BBC, came to the US on assignment, and wound up staying. He got his US Citizenship in the late-'30s, conveniently before he would have had to go back home and join up (on account of that guy with the small mustache), and not long after the war ended starting doing recording for a weekly segment on BBC Radio entitled "Letter From America" wherein he explained his new country (or did his best) to the denizens of his old one.
In the mid-1970s, he hosted a 13-part series produced by Time-Life Films based upon his 1973 book of the same name. It's a fascinating, albeit by no means conclusive, look at 200 years of the existence of the US as only a native Briton could tell it. In writing this I have been looking to see if it available on UA-cam, but it seems only individual episodes are hosted on any given channel and the Time-Life section of Internet Archive is grossly disorganized. So good luck, I have just set you a task which might not be do-able.
“Philosopher Bart Simpson? 😂😂😂
Where I grew up in Northern California, the major crops in our area are almonds, walnuts, and rice. California grows many different crops, depending upon the location within the state.
7:30 dry stone walls were a big thing here in the US as well for hundreds of years. If you travel along the east coast of the US, especially in the areas where settlers first came, stone walls existed everywhere and in many cases, still do. Look for Dutch settlements in New York, for example. My family's own farm has stone walls everywhere. We also have an early irrigation system on the hilly areas that incorporates clay tiles, which are basically fired clay tubes and collect run-off water and carries it away from the farming areas.
"The comparative lack of sheep in America accounts for widespread insomnia!"
Hah hah ha ha ha!
If you count the legs aand divide by four, you'll fall asleep faster!
I remember when I was in the UK, I saw tons of pastures on the way to Bath. That was my first time seeing Pigs as big as humans!😳😳😳
ive always seen the 400-500 lbs pigs
@@dperry19661 History’s Largest pig was Big Bill, a Poland-China breed who weighed in at a hefty 1,157 kg (2,552 lb) and was 2.74 m (9 ft) long. This huge hog stood 1.52 m (5 ft) to his shoulder, about the same as an average-height 12-year-old girl. A lot of bacon. I saw a few in Virginia that were close. Not household pets.
Seeing giant pigs on your way to "Bath"....what a mental image.