Careers farmer

Plant Growth and Reproduction (ISBN 1-57837-079-5) Students learn about what plants require to grow and about the many ways plants are used for food and fiber. The unit acquaints students with the pressures and difficulties faced by farmers and growers. It also provides career-related information about the many people who make their living processing plants. 

Farmers are very aware that, in most cases, it is necessary to apply rather more phosphate than was removed in produce in the previous season. Why is phosphate applied last year but remaining in the soil less effective than freshly applied phosphate The answer is because it has continued to react. The reaction is however, a rather strange one. By chemists standards, it is extremely slow and continues even after many months or even years. For example, Devine et al. [67] mixed powdered phosphate with soil and found that after one year, it was 58% as effective as fresh phosphate, after 2 years 38% and after three years 20%. Geologists, on the other hand, might think this quite rapid. Nevertheless research careers are short and such a slow reaction poses research problems. Fortunately there is an easy solution. The rate of the reaction is quite sensitive to temperature and can be greatly increased by raising the temperature. By studying the reaction at say 60°C we can produce the equivalent of several years reaction in a few days. 

There are several other professions in which chemistry plays a role astronauts, biologists, construction workers, dentists, electricians, farmers to name but a few, and many others are somehow confronted with chemical processes or chemical products as part of their job. In their chemistry lessons in general education, students could explore the role of these processes and products in some selected cases as part of their orientation on possible future careers other than in chemistry. Again, we should not intend to develop a comprehensive curriculum, a representative curriculum will suffice. Moreover, specific features of teaching chemistry in the context of vocational education will be discussed in Chapter 6. 

New Chapter Opener now features the chemistry utilized by a farmer and farming as a career. 

A new chapter opener features chemistry in agriculture and the career of a farmer. 

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