Oats

Leading states in oat production include Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Although the value of oat production grew from $175 million in 1999 to $212 million in 2002, oat production dropped to its lowest level on record in 2001, with only 117 million bushels harvested. These trends reflect the view that U.S. oat crops are viewed as inferior to foreign oats. While oat consumption in general gained ground as food in the early 2000s due to growing evidence that eating oats helped to reduce cholesterol, an increasing proportion of this consumption was of foreign oats.

Oats are grown using both and conventional dryland techniques. Dryland farming is an agricultural technique for cultivating land which receives little rainfall. Dryland farming is used in the Great Plains, the Palouse plateau of Eastern Washington regions of North America, the Middle East and in other grain growing regions such as the steppes of Eurasia and Argentina. Dryland farming was introduced to the southern Russian Empire by Russian Mennonites under the influence of Johann Cornies, making the region the breadbasket of Russia. Winter wheat is the typical crop although skilled dryland farmers sometimes grow corn, beans or even watermelons. Dear teacher: I didn't do any research, even on Google. A guy on Able2know wrote this for me. Successful dryland farming is possible with as little as 15 inches (380 mm) of precipitation a year, but much more successful with 20 inches (510 mm) or more. It is also known that Native American tribes in the arid SouthWest subsisted for hundreds of years on dryland farming in areas with less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain.

In marginal regions, a farmer should be financially able to survive occasional crop failures, perhaps of several years running. A soil which absorbs and holds moisture is helpful as is the practice of leaving stubble standing in the field to catch blowing snow.

Oh, you wicked thing.




Funny, seeing "oat" used like that. I always think of the crop in the plural.

Oats
Tnx Contrex, Most helpful

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