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Where Did You Come From?
The farmers in the United States grow lots of fruits and vegetables. 
Farmers in other countries grow fruits and vegetables too. Sometimes people in the United States trade fruits and vegetables with people in other countries. In this lesson you will find out why it makes sense to trade with other countries.
You will use your knowledge of specialization, importing, and exporting to explain why people in Chile produce goods sold in the United States.
Complete the following activity and then be prepared to share and discuss your responses with the class.
The 50 states of the United States have a lot of different weather. Some places are warm all the time, some places have rain most every day, some places hardly ever have rain, and some places have snow all the time! Could apples grow in all those different places?
Fruits and vegetables need special weather to grow just right.
Fruits and vegetables need special weather to grow just right. Click on the Fruits and Vegetables Encyclopedia
on the Dole Super Kids
website . Then in click on 'Blueberries' and read about places where blueberries are grown.
Bananas are grown mainly outside of the United States. To get a hint at where bananas are grown, visit the Fruits and Vegetables Encyclopedia
. Then in click on 'Bananas' and read about places where bananas are grown. . It will give you the information. Where are bananas grown? To double check your answer click on the Nutrition Database. Select bananas, then click on "Growing Regions " on the left side. See where bananas are grown.
Lots of fruits and vegetables are grown in Florida, including oranges, lemons and limes. Click on Fruit and Vegetable Encyclopedia
and guess five other fruits and vegetables that are grown in Florida. Make a list. Then check your list to see if Florida is a place where your listed fruit or vegetable is grown. Keep looking up the fruits and vegetables until you have five.
Did you know that there are 13 total (including oranges, lemons, and limes) fruits and vegetables grown in Florida on the list? Can you think why Florida is a good place to grow all these fruits and vegetables?
Do you think bananas could be grown in Florida? You know that bananas need to have weather that is hot and sunny. Is it hot and sunny in Florida? The reason that Florida does not grow a lot of bananas is that Florida SPECIALIZES in growing other fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits. In other words, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines, papayas, and mangoes grow so easily in Florida that it would not make sense to try to grow bananas, since they grow easily in Latin America. The climate that citrus fruits need is not exactly the climate that bananas need in order to grow. Although bananas can be grown in Florida, they grow much better in Latin America. So, people in the United States IMPORTS bananas.
IMPORTS are goods or services bought from sellers in another country. We import bananas because Latin America has the right resources to grow bananas easily.
We EXPORT citrus fruits and other fruits and vegetables. EXPORTS of fruits and vegetables mean that they are grown in the United States but sold to buyers in other countries. We export oranges because Florida and California have the right resources to grow oranges easily.
Producers in Florida SPECIALIZE when they decide to grow citrus fruits instead of bananas. Latin America SPECIALIZES in growing bananas. When countries SPECIALIZE they put their resources to work to produce a few things instead of using their resources to produce a lot of things. Specialization leads to INTERDEPENDENCE. Interdependence means being dependent on other countries to produce what you don't. The more countries specialize and trade, the more interdependent they become. Can you think of a country that SPECIALIZES in growing coffee? You may have seen an advertisement that says coffee is grown in Colombia by Juan Valdez. Juan Valdez is just a character used in an advertisement to sell coffee. Colombia has the right resources for growing coffee easily. Those resources include the right weather, the right soil, and just the right temperature of mountain water in which to wash the beans. Do you think Colombia imports or exports coffee?
Because the United States imports goods and services, people in the United States can have fruits and vegetables, from other countries all year long . Because the United States exports goods and services, people in other countries are able to eat fruits like blueberries and apples that they do not grow in their own country. SPECIALIZATION helps people in many different countries trade with one another. SPECIALIZATION makes people interdependent.
Complete the following interactive activity. This activity can be printed or discussed in order to provide assessment.
