Answering a Question

All my life I have been around farming and the agriculture industry, more now than ever. As a child, my great uncle owned a running cattle farm and I lived in  a small rural community.
now, a freshman in college, i've spent almost every day working on a farm during the past few
summers. Whether baling hay, feeding livestock, or picking up rocks in the fields after planting is finished. Working on a farm almost full time can teach you a lot more than just how to operate tractors and other equipment. You learn to appreciate little things that are often over looked. Things like the values of a blue collar lifestyle, or how much can actually come from the crops you spend months preparing so you can get the highest yield possible.

 

Farmers, just like any other group of people, are all different but the share one common goal. They all use different methods, some like Case, while others swear by John Deere, but at the end of the day, they all do what they do for the same reason, to feed people across the country. Not many people wake up one day, and decide they want to be a farmer. Most farmers today have inherited family farms or their families have been farmers for generations. That being said, farmers have deep family values. Most farmers have such family oriented operations that they spend hours on end together every day, and then go home and sit around the dinner table together. Unlike someone who works in an office building for eight hours a day that may dislike their coworkers, on a family farm you’re always with them so you must make things work.

 

Farming, like most blue collar professions, seems to be a very underappreciated line of work. Working “full time” on a farm is a lot different than a full time job in an office. For most people, a forty hour week is full time. On a farm, full time is sun up, to sun down or later every day. Farming is much more than a little manual labor and sweat on a hot summer day. It’s a year round responsibility, not just a few days of planting then six months sitting around until harvest. All the work starts over from the day you harvest. As soon as harvest is over, you’re spending long, cold days in a tractor plowing fields before the ground freezes, then its back in the shop, fixing anything you may have broken or worn down in the last few weeks. In all reality, farmers work from well before sunrise, to well after dark, leaving no time for play. If you’ve ever talked to a farmer, you would notice all they do revolves around work. No matter what time of year, or what time of day it is, everything they do is about farming. Of course they make time for family and faith, but one can only do so much.

 

Dairy and livestock farmers are just as important as those harvesting grain. Without them we wouldn’t have two of the most commonly consumed items in the world, red meat and dairy products. If it weren’t for these farmers, we would have to find other ways to get all the nutrients we get from meat and dairy that keeps us up and running throughout the day. In order for us to get the benefits from these farmers, we need them all to be successful because without one, we won’t have the other. Without the grain, the livestock farmers can’t feed their animals. Without the livestock, the crop growers have nothing to fertilize their fields.

 

As stated before, farmers all share one common thing, their beliefs and values. Farmers, in most cases, have more on their plate than anyone, yet they still value their freedoms and use it to push through the toughest times. Many people have said “farmers are the back bone of America”, and this could not be any more true. Farmers truly do keep this country moving forward. If you spent just a day on a true, running farm somewhere in the Midwest, you would see how every day they are working to find ways to produce higher yielding crops, or even find new methods to grow new crops in their area.

 

Farmers across the country take a huge risk the second they plant that seed. Too much or too little rain or one big wind storm and they could lose their entire crop, thousands of dollars down the drain in an instant. When natural disasters hit, and destroy crops in their path, we are impacted as well. Prices of food, gas and other items we rely on every day go through the roof. Not because of something the president did or greedy “big wigs” in Washington are trying to fill their pockets. Crops like corn are used in the manufacturing of hundreds of products we rely on every day. If a record drought hit the Midwest and cut average yields in half, we would feel the impact in more ways than one. These men and women know how big of a risk they take when they pull into the field to plant, yet they keep on going and don’t look back. Taking a risk like this requires a lot of hard work and dedication to minimize your chances of something going wrong, as well as being able to think on your feet and fix things quickly if anything was to go wrong. Risking everything you have year after year can take toll on you after a while, therefore farmers must have very deep values, and be able to cope with the fear of losing a year’s worth of work.

 

Farming is just a way of life, that’s all it is, but it is one of the toughest, most challenging ways of life anyone could have. With all they do for this country and even the world, farmers should be the richest people you would meet, but that’s not the case. Actually, farmers are very underappreciated. Not everything you have comes right from a factory, and if it did, how did it get there? I can assure you it didn’t just appear there one day and the factory workers tried to make something out of it.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

1) Smith, Ron. "Farm Economy Will Not Escape Effects Of Global Recession." Southwest Farm Press 36.2 (2009): 1-5. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.

 

2) Scharplaz, Jim. "Biting The Land That Feeds Us." Mother Earth News 211 (2005): 52. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.