Everyone is involved with agriculture

By Matt Aultman

“If you ate today, thank a farmer,” many have seen these bumper stick­ers on vehi­cles through­out the coun­try, but if you think about this state­ment, it involves more than a farmer.
What got me think­ing about this is when I recently went to the Amer­i­can Farm Bureau Annual meet­ing in Nashville, and it opened up my mind to how diverse agri­cul­ture is. We have so many dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes of those involved and how they all are inter­twined. I met many dif­fer­ent peo­ple from some­one who was a food proces­sor to some­one who raises a cut-your-own tulip mar­ket. I also attended a ses­sion on the how to inter­act with those not actively involved with pro­duc­tion agri­cul­ture and it opened my eyes to a dif­fer­ent point of view. This gave me a great idea; how many occu­pa­tions are out there that are agri­cul­ture related? It may sur­prise you, because it did me!
So here is a par­tial list of occu­pa­tions that I have com­piled that are a part of agri­cul­ture: agron­o­mists; ani­mal sci­ence; bak­ers; bar­ley pro­duc­ers; bee­keep­ers; biol­o­gists; brewers/distillery pro­duc­ers; cat­tle, swine, poul­try, sheep, goat, rab­bit, deer, elk, buf­falo and any other one I missed; pro­duc­ers (both for meat pro­duc­tion and breed­ing stock sup­plier); cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers; corn syrup pro­duc­tion; corn, soy­bean and wheat pro­duc­tion; cot­ton pro­duc­ers; dairy farmer; drainage tech­ni­cians; edu­ca­tors; engi­neers; equip­ment deal­ers; ethanol pro­duc­tion; feed man­u­fac­tur­ers; fer­til­izer and her­bi­cide sup­pli­ers; flower, nurs­ery stock and green­house pro­duc­tion; food man­u­fac­turer; forestry man­age­ment; gar­dener; genetic sci­en­tists; grain millers; gro­cery; hay/forage pro­ducer; herb pro­duc­tion; land­scap­ers; lum­ber; machinists/millwrights; maple syrup pro­duc­tion; mechan­i­cal engi­neers; milo pro­duc­ers; nutri­tion­ists; orchard/fruit pro­duc­tion; organic farm prod­uct pro­ducer; peanuts pro­duc­ers; petro­leum com­pa­nies; rice pro­ducer; seafood pro­duc­ers; sod pro­duc­ers; soy­bean oil pro­duc­tion; spelt’s pro­duc­ers; tobacco pro­duc­ers; tree nut pro­duc­ers; vegetable/produce pro­duc­tion; vet­eri­nar­i­ans; water qual­ity man­age­ment; wildlife man­age­ment; lawyers, accoun­tants and leg­is­la­tors (yes, they are involved with agri­cul­ture to either defend, fol­low or make the rules for those involved with agri­cul­ture), and last, but not least any­one who cooks and eats.
I know this is a sur­pris­ing list and I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but look at it see if you can find one or more of these that you are a part of. This list is just to show how diverse agri­cul­ture is and how many peo­ple are involved in agri­cul­ture that touches our lives on a daily basis.
I sug­gest that we need to change the slo­gan from the “If you ate today, thank a farmer” to “If you ate today, thank your neigh­bor.” We are all involved in this!”

Matt Ault­man is the Chair­man of the Darke Co. Cham­ber Ag Com­mit­tee and Chairman-elect of the Darke Co. Farm Bureau. He can be reached at darkecountyfarmer@gmail.com for comments.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Feb 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.