PLANTS ARE PRODUCERS

• People are consumers. We have to spend large parts of our days finding, buying, cooking, and eating our food. Every once in a while, do you get to thinking that it must be nice to be able to make your own food like plants do? Plants are producers. They use light from the sun, water, and carbon dioxide (yes, that gas that we all breathe out when we exhale) to perform a chemical reaction called photosynthesis. The end result is sugar for the plant to “eat,” water, and the release of a gas we all need to breathe, oxygen, into the air.

• So how do plants do it, and why can’t we? Plants have special structures called chloroplasts that people just don’t have. A substance within the chloroplasts, called chlorophyll, is what gives leafy green plants their green color. Chloroplasts are round, flat organelles that are arranged in stacks called grana. These stacks are filled with chlorophyll, whose main job it is to absorb light from the sun. Ironically, chloroplasts can absorb every color except green. Light activates the chlorophyll when it hits it, creating an energy that splits molecules of water, separating them out into hydrogen and oxygen. Chemical reactions take place, during which hydrogen from the water combines with carbon from the carbon dioxide we breathe out. Oxygen, which is a gas, is released into the air.   
• People and plants make perfect partners. Plants rely on the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, and we rely on the oxygen that they “breathe” out. This is one good reason for protecting plant life on Earth. Algae fields near the poles produce a constant supply of oxygen for us, as do the many plants of Earth’s rainforests. We must not become short-sighted and forget that we need plants in order to survive. Conservation projects around the globe are aimed at protecting our natural resources, including numerous species of plants. Our quality of life, and the very quality of the air we breathe, depends upon our green plant partners.
  
  

Name:__________________________________

Answer the following questions based on the reading passage. Don’t forget to go back to the passage whenever necessary to find or confirm your answers.

1)   Why are plants called producers?

2)   Where do plants get their green color?

3)   Explain the relationship between people and plants. Why are we good partners? 

4)   Name one of the major sources of oxygen on planet Earth.

5)   What are the potential effects of cutting down large sections of Earth’s rain forests?