This first day of Spring is also National Agriculture Day, capping off National Ag Week. Iowa Farm Bureau spokesman Aaron Putze says what makes Iowa unique is its connection to the land and to agriculture. There are 90-thousand farms in Iowa while nearly one of every five Iowans is employed in some way by agriculture. Putze says Iowa farmers are the nation’s leaders in several categories, including in the production of pork, corn, soybeans and eggs.Iowa’s among the nation’s top producers of: beef, lambs, poultry, turkeys, dairy products, and hay. Putze says Iowa farmers are also the nation’s leaders in the use of farming practices that protect the environment — they’re number-one in the use of conservation tillage and number-one in the creation of buffer strips to prevent erosion. He says Iowa farmers are also setting a national example in renewable energy production. There are ten ethanol plants online in Iowa now and two more are being built, while Iowa ranks tenth in the U.S. in terms of wind energy potential, with several large wind “farms” in operation now, mostly in northern Iowa.
