Here are 30 Interesting Farmer facts.
1-5 Farmer Facts
1. Farmers in the USA are hacking their John Deere tractors with Ukrainian firmware, which seems to be the only way to actually own the machines and their software, rather than rent them for lifetime from John Deere. – Source
2. Some farmers in Bangladesh have switched to raising ducks instead of chickens because, during catastrophic floods, ducks float. – Source
3. Australian opium farmers found mysterious crop circles in their fields. The culprits were wallabies who got high and bounced around in circles. – Source
4. Nepalese farmers create honey called ‘mad honey’ which is produced by bees pollinating rhododendron plants. The honey is psychoactive and its effects can range from euphoria and lightheadedness to being similar to a full-blown acid trip. – Source
5. In 1965, a Ukrainian farmer dug up the lower jawbone of a mammoth. Further excavations revealed the presence of 4 huts, made up of a total of 149 mammoth bones. These dwellings, dating back some 15,000 years, were determined to have been some of the oldest shelters ever built. – Source
6-10 Farmer Facts
6. The popular Sriracha sauce in the US (in the green-capped bottle) tastes different because they have a different supplier of chile peppers. The owner sued the original supplier for $1 million claiming he overpaid. The farmer countersued and won $23.3 million and now makes his own sriracha. – Source
7. There’s a farmer in South Africa who has bred ducks for many years. He uses the ducks instead of pesticides on his farm. Every morning he assembles over 1,000 ducks into a line to go and pluck the pests out of his vineyard. – Source
8. In 1943, a Mexican farmer named Dionisio Pulido had a volcano start to form in his cornfield. By the early 50s, it was over 400 meters tall. Before being evacuated and leaving his home for the last time, he left a sign that read “This volcano is owned and operated by Dionisio Pulido.” – Source
9. During prohibition, grape farmers would make semi-solid grape concentrates called wine bricks, which were then sold with the warning “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine”. – Source
10. After the Vietnam war, Vietnamese farmers recycled thousands of external fuel tanks from U.S. aircraft to create river boats and canoes. – Source
11-15 Farmer Facts
11. In ’86, a California farmer named Mike Yurosek was unhappy he was not able to sell his imperfect carrots. So he cut and shaved them into cuter versions and called them “baby-cut” carrots. Before the invention of the baby carrot, each American ate 6 lbs of carrot a year, now they eat 11 lbs. – Source
12. Farmers sometimes put goldfish in a horse’s water trough to control mosquito and other insect larvae from producing. – Source
13. A Japanese farmer discovered a gold seal while repairing an irrigation ditch in 1784. The seal turned out to be 95% pure gold and was a gift from the Chinese Emperor to a Japanese envoy from 54 CE, the earliest recorded date of contact between the two countries. – Source
14. The US government created a raisin cartel that was run by raisin companies, which increased prices by limiting the supply and forced farmers to hand over their crops without paying them. The cartel lasted 66 years until the Supreme Court broke it up in 2015. – Source
15. Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail comes from cooperatively owned cranberry farms where 100% of product profits are returned to farmers. – Source
16-20 Farmer Facts
16. Ghana and Ivory Coast produce at least 70 percent of the world’s cocoa beans. And the world is running out of cocoa farmers as the next generation refuses to take up this job because of the difficulty of the process and wages as low as 84 cents a day. – Source
17. A farmer named Tony Dighera developed a plastic mold to put over his pumpkins so that they grow into the face of Frankenstein. Known as “Pumpkinsteins”, it took him 4 years, 27 varieties of pumpkin, and $400,000 to perfect his idea. – Source
18. The gene that was bred into tomatoes by commercial farmers to give them a uniform color had the unintended result of preventing internal sugar reactions that give tomatoes flavor. This mutation (and lack of flavor) has been bred into almost all commercial American tomatoes. – Source
19. Coconut farmers in Thailand train pigtailed macaques to harvest their coconuts. A trained macaque can pick up to 1600 coconuts a day, while a human can harvest around 100. – Source
20. Humans used crop rotation 8,000 years ago. As far back as 6000 BC, farmers alternated planting crops each year. They did not understand the chemistry but knew that doing so kept the soil healthy for good harvests. – Source
21-25 Farmer Facts
21. 95% of consumers buy organic foods because they thought it meant it was pesticide-free, even though farmers use pesticides on organic crops. – Source
22. Farmers feed large magnets to cows to prevent “Hardware Disease”. Cow Magnets sit in their “stomach” for the lifetime of the cow and prevent accidentally eaten pieces of metal from lodging in the stomach folds causing illness. – Source
23. An Indian farmer discovered he had been declared legally dead when he tried to apply for a bank loan, then spent 19 years trying to prove to the government he was actually alive. – Source
24. Farmers in Kenya are using elephants’ natural fears of bees and building “beehive fences” that keep wild elephants from trampling the crops. It keeps the farms safe, and prevents farmers from having to kill elephants to defend their livelihood! – Source
25. In 2004, farmers in India used Pepsi and Coca Cola instead of pesticides because they were cheaper and got the job done just as well. – Source
26-30 Farmer Facts
26. Laws mentioned in the bible required farmers to leave parts of their fields unharvested for strangers, a practice that still exists in parts of the world. – Source
27. Farming in Japan is done mostly by senior citizens, 63.5% of farmers are older than 65. – Source
28. An Australian farmer protested government-imposed wheat quotas by ceding from Australia and creating his own country. This was 40 years ago. The country still exists, and he’s the king. – Source
29. Farmers allow the “Tree Goats of Morocco” to climb Argan trees to eat the fruit because their poop (consisting of digested clumps of seeds) is then pressed to create the sought-after Argan oil. Argan oil is commonly found in the popular Ogx Shampoo bottle… effectively making it Shampoop. – Source
30. European regulations require that pig farmers provide a mentally-stimulating activity for their pigs in order to reduce boredom. – Source
