A Guys perspective from #GreenGiantVV

Well it’s Matt. As many of you know Sarah and I just got back this past weekend from visiting Green Giant’s facilities in Minnesota. Let me say we had tons of fun! But many of you might be wondering what a guy thought of a trip among 22 other bloggers who were all female. Well the main thing I learned was – Yummy! Yes I ate a lot! As you can see in the photo above we saw lots of corn! We ate lots of corn! We also learned a lot about corn and many other vegetables. For me and I am sure many other guys, we love to learn the numbers. I am very logical and love to figure things out. I am very logical minded.

One of the things I learned from the guys there teaching us about Green Giant’s agriculture programs is their increased production abilities since they began farming. It really amazed me. Did you know in the 1950′s farmers could only produce 82 cases per acre.

Now what’s in a case? A case is 24 cans that are 11 ounces each. Wow right? That might seem like a lot, but with science management that includes special irrigation, soil management, finding the right species of corn out of over 3000 different varieties, and so many other practices that Green Giant help increase production. Since Green Giant has been around since 1903. That and their partnerships with universities all helped and continue to advance the science behind the vegetables on our plates.

By the 1970′s they were able to advance production to 150 cases per acre. With many more years of research and growing thousands of test crops, they advanced even more. In the 1990′s that production soared to 250 cases per acre. That’s not even the end of it. By 2010 the production of sweet corn blew out of the field to 350 cases per acre!

In the photo below you can see on the far right that little row is all it takes now to produce 24 cans (11 ounce each) of sweet corn.

In a 6 foot by 6 foot square of corn, Green Giant has been able to produce one whole case (24 cans) of delicious corn! The section in the middle is from the 1990′s and the one to the right was the amount it took to produce one case of corn. It was a great visual example of the advancement of crop production that Green Giant has perfected over the century!

So what else did I learn from our visit?

It’s so good raw in the field! I ate two whole cobs – even after a huge lunch we had earlier. It was soooo GOOD – More Green Giant stories to come!

Green Giant paid for our travel, but we were not paid to attend.  All opinions are our own.