Is agriculture relevant...I believe it is

I recently read an arti­cle about how the Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture Vil­sack out­lined how agri­cul­ture is becom­ing less and less rel­e­vant. I went through a mul­ti­tude of emo­tions when I first read it and I came to an epiphany that he is absolutely right.
As a farm­ing com­mu­nity, we have become united and we have also become smaller as a per­cent­age of the total U.S. pop­u­la­tion, and some say we are small but carry a large voice that com­mands an emo­tional response from many. Those of us in the farm­ing com­mu­nity have been try­ing to teach peo­ple about agri­cul­ture and we need to take the next step of get­ting oth­ers more involved.
We all remem­ber that feel­ing being sim­i­lar to when we were in school; the home­work, sci­ence fairs, and gym class and the urge to be at home doing some­thing totally not school related. This is the feel­ing that needs to be over­come to help bridge the gap between the food and the farmer.
Our world is mor­ph­ing to come full cir­cle to what I’ve been told life was like dur­ing the 1930’s. At the time peo­ple bought locally off their neigh­bors and they knew where our food came from. Secure food sources and fam­ily val­ues are some­thing that many in soci­ety are cur­rently striv­ing for again. Now is the time that we need to come to a real­iza­tion that each and every one of us pos­sess these val­ues and skills and we need to share it with the world.
You can ask your­self how we can become rel­e­vant in the near future while we strive as a com­mu­nity to help feed the world. This is a ques­tion that I fear my chil­dren will be ask­ing when they get to my age. With the many peo­ple that I deal with in a month’s time, either farm­ers or busi­ness peo­ple, I have came to the com­mon con­sen­sus that we are all striv­ing to stay rel­e­vant and the abil­ity to be good stew­ards of the land.
My mother said it best, “we never own the land we farm, but sim­ply are stew­ards while we are above ground and we must care for it so the next gen­er­a­tion can live as well as we have.”
This can be accom­plished by fol­low­ing the best sci­en­tific prac­tices avail­able and lis­ten­ing to your farm. A man from one of the farm insur­ance com­pa­nies spoke to a group of farm­ers recently and coined that last lit­tle bit per­fectly, “Lis­ten to the farm, and let it speak to you what it needs done to it.”
What I am sug­gest­ing is that if we let every­one know what we do on a daily basis, we will be able to help tell the story of agri­cul­ture, and it will help shake the shroud of mys­tery. It also begins to bridge the gen­er­a­tional gap from Old McDonald’s farm to the busi­ness that agri­cul­ture has become today.
Gone are the days of diver­si­fi­ca­tion on each farm and more spe­cial­iza­tion to a few com­modi­ties. This way we can focus our time, resources and energy to be stew­ards of our land. Along with bring­ing a bet­ter under­stand­ing of that com­mod­ity, pro­duce it in an effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tally con­science way. This also allows for the more eco­nom­i­cal use of avail­able resources and the con­ser­va­tion of water.
We are now in the 21st cen­tury and if we look to the way farm­ing prac­tices were accom­plished at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tury; we have had great advance­ments to pro­duc­tion, the effi­ciency of our time and the use of resources. Imag­ine what farm­ing will be like when the cal­en­dar rolls to the 22nd cen­tury, and the amount of mouths that will need to be fed. Along with the grow­ing pop­u­lous, this will teach all of us to do more with less, and become more effi­cient and trans­par­ent to the con­sumer.
So, with the hol­i­day sea­son upon us, this is the per­fect time of the year to share with your friends and neigh­bors. This past year was a try­ing year for a lot of peo­ple and it helps us to remem­ber the value of what we have and value of those around us. I may be young and a lit­tle wide-eyed, but the agri­cul­ture com­mu­nity we live in has shown me in the few short years I’ve been on this Earth that we are blessed and lucky. Happy New Year and wish­ing pros­per­ity to you and your own in the com­ing year.
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 Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.