Farms grow food, but they’ve also grown in size over time. Have your students draw their own garden from a bird’s-eye view. Have you ever grown or seen a vegetable garden? Imagine that everything you eat in year is grown in that one garden.
Since most people don’t grow or raise their own food, farmers have to use more space to grow enough to feed not only themselves but many other people also. Back in 1940, each farmer fed eleven people; by 2002, each farmer fed ninety people. With a growing population, farms have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Put all of your students’ gardens together on the wall to show how quickly the farm grows.
These big farms, known as industrial farms, are useful because fewer people can grow more food. That means most people don’t need to worry about growing the food they eat. They can do other things with their lives like write books or race cars or fly planes. Yet, in order for fewer people to grow more food, they have to find ways to be very efficient, meaning they can’t waste any time or money. They have to be fast and do things cheaply.
Think of your garden, and picture going out and picking the weeds that pop up in between the plants. It’s important to get rid of the weeds because they complete with the edible garden plants for water, sun, and soil nutrients (plant food). If you had to pick the weeds from everyone’s gardens, it would be a lot more difficult and take a lot more time. Industrial farms use pesticides to kill the weeds because it saves time. However, these chemicals end up killing bugs like butterflies and bees in addition to the weeds. They also sink into the soil and soak down into our groundwater (the water underground that most of our drinking water is drawn from). They can also end up in the food that is grown at the farm.