According to Dick, there thousands acres of land being farmed within 25 miles of Fort Morgan. The need for food in Colorado is rising higher as the population grows, but the understanding of what that takes to produce enough food for all, according to Dick, is shockingly low.
“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to get the food on their plate. They just think it comes from the grocery store,” said Dick.
“The bottom line is that there is no particular reason to believe that currently available GMO crops pose any health risk, or that they are different with regard to their safety and nutrition from their conventional analogues. There is also nothing about the current processes used to generate GMOs that would theoretically pose a unique health risk,” state a report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
According to studies, it takes about one acre to feed a person for a year. The study also states that the average American consumes about 2,000 pounds of food annually. Dick explained that crops are not only used as a direct food product to consumers, but also to feed livestock for meat production and even, in the case of corn, used to produce ethanol gas.
Reports by the USDA, the average corn harvest is about 147 bushels per acre, or about 8,250 lbs. The vast majority of corn, according to the report, is roughly split between ethanol factories and animal feed, with perhaps 10 percent or less used for food directly.
According to Dick, a lot of science beyond GMOs is also implemented when planting and growing crops. Growing crops, he said, can be a complicated and delicate process. Even when crops have been planted under perfect conditions, severe weather can destroy them or prohibit them from harvesting.
Read more at Fort Morgan Times Agriculture