Increasingly, it means diversifying your crop base, spreading out risk, so you're not subject to the whims of 1 market. USDA has a tremendous partnership with Virginia State in terms of helping limited resource farmers diversify their crops, and bring some stability and upward momentum to their bottom line. We're also looking at agri-tourism opportunities there. Over in Suffolk, Virginia State and USDA folks are helping connect farm cooperators with the byproducts of a nearby cotton gin and peanut processing plant that the farmers use as low-cost alternatives to chemical fertilizers. USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service is also a partner in the wetlands demonstration that's on display today.
Conservation is critical to the staying power of agriculture and our world.
America learned its lesson back in the 30s. I'm from Kansas, and if you go back and read the newspaper accounts of the Dust Bowl, folks said they could actually hear the ground cracking. We must choose not to. That's no easy task considering the demands facing agriculture in the years ahead. In the coming century, the global population is expected to grow at the rate of a New York City every month.