• Caitlin Siefkes recently returned from a trip to China with the SDSU China Ag Travel Class. The trip was May 12-25, 2014. Caitlin writes about some of her experiences as printed below:
• First stop on the first complete day in China was to Pioneer headquarters. We were provided with information about Pioneer's work in China, which is only in corn. Similar to what we do here, they also use hybrid seed. But the similarities stop there. Farmers in the United States buy their seed in bulk to plant their 100-200 acre fields. In

China, farmers buy bags of seed about the size of a chip bag that plant 2 mu (1/3 acres). Each bag contains roughly 8,500 seeds. The number of seeds is known because farmers will count the seeds once they have purchased a bag to make sure there are 8,500 seeds.
• One-third of an acre seems tiny in the United States, but in China, it's an average size because farms are only 1-2 acres in total size.

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