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MY DAILY DIET: GRAINS 14

because it can grow many places and can be easily transported to places it can’t grow. China, India, and the United States grow the most wheat and send it around the globe. France, Russia, Australia, Canada, and Pakistan also grow wheat. Corn was originally domesticated in Mexico. Farmers in Mexico still grow a lot of corn. The United States grows the most corn in the world, followed by China and Brazil. You can see that a few countries with a lot of land, like China and the United States, grow a lot of grain. No matter the grain, farmers go through the same process to grow it. First, they plant the seeds. In fact, the seeds are exactly the same thing that people eat as grains. Farmers just save some of the grains to plant instead of eat. Then farmers have to take care of the grain plants as they grow. Some farmers spray pesticides on them to protect them from insects. They also might spray fertilizer on them to keep them growing and strong. If there isn’t enough rain, farmers water the grain using huge machines. After the grain plants have grown for a while, they start producing the grain seeds. Farmers have to wait to make sure the seeds are dried out before they harvest them. Finally, after months of growing, the grains are ready for harvesting. On most big farms, farmers use huge tractors to harvest thousands of plants at a time. The machines separate the grain seed from the rest of the plant so that the farmer doesn’t have to do it by hand. On smaller farms, farmers harvest the grain by hand. They might use a sharp knife called a scythe to cut down the plants. Then they separate all the grains from the plants by hand. Some smaller farmers may use smaller machines to help them. Very large farms often have grain storage right on site to keep the grains until they’re ready to sell them and ship them away. The grain is stored in a silo . Farmers also dry out the grains so that they don’t get moldy and spoil. FACTORIES Most grains don’t go straight from the farm to the grocery store. A lot of them end up in factories first. RESEARCH PROJECT This chapter discusses the domestication of grain plants. Do some research about other living things that people have domesticated over the past few thousand years. Use the Internet or a library to find out more about domesticated plants and animals. Identify one plant and one animal that have been domesticated, and write a paragraph for each about how, where, and when humans domesticated them. Then write another paragraph explaining how domestication of these living things helped humans in the past and how they con- tinue to benefit us today.