Do You Appreciate The Importance Of Farming

Less than one hundred years ago rural life and farming were as much a part of us as apple pie and ice cream. But as we have matured and become a more modern world our ties to farming and the rural way of life seem to have become less important. But is that really true? Is farming less important than it was one hundred years ago? Do you really understand and appreciate the importance of farming?

How many times do you see a television show or a magazine that’s depicting the beauty of country living? What I find so ironical about these shows or readings is that there they are depicting country living with all the things that go with city life. Sadly many people believe that’s just how it is.

Agricultural is an important part of many states and provinces within North America. In fact agriculture is the main stay for many small communities, never mind the fact that the agriculture community is what provides us with the majority of the food products we buy. Yet there is a large percentage of the population who have little use for farmers or farming. They believe all those animals make them noisy, smelly, and dirty places.

If you’ve ever spent any time on a farm you’ll have a totally different view from the city folk. In fact you will most likely have the opposite view. You’ll see the city as the smelly, noisy, dirty place with crime and other dysfunctional elements of society. You’ll see the farm as the peaceful place with wide open spaces and so much fresh air.

It’s almost alarming that many cities have separated themselves so much from the country that the importance of farming is no longer recognized. Believe it or not there are hundreds of thousands of people that when asked where milk comes from, will reply “the grocery store.”

These city people have little thought into where their food comes from other than the grocery store. They think little about where or how the produce on the grocery shelves came to be, where the dairy products came from, or what process was involved in getting those foods to the grocery store.

It never crosses their mind that somewhere a farmer had to raise a cow, milk that cow, ship that milk away for processing so that it could be conveniently found on a store shelf. It never crosses their mind that the lettuce salad they so enjoy took the hard labor of a farmer to plant the field, water the field, harvest the field, and make arrangements to get the product to market.

How many of you are aware that almost all the food we consume is thanks to a farmer’s work somewhere. Beef, chicken, pork, lamb? All compliments of a farmer. Milk, cheese, eggs? All compliments of a farmer. Carrots, Lettuce, Apples, Oranges? All compliments of a farmer. The reality is that those products that are the healthiest grew on a farm somewhere. In fact many of those prepackaged products we so enjoy begin with products that come from a farm.

I think it is time we gave farmers and the land they farm the respect and appreciation they deserve. Over the years we have lost many farmers. In fact they are rather like a dying bread. Have you ever stopped to think about what would happen if our farming communities were to disappear? Where would we get most of our food from? How fresh do you think our food would be if it had to come from overseas and what do you think it would cost us?

Remember we all have to eat and 85% of the population doesn’t produce anything we can eat while the 15% represents farmers of all kind. It wasn’t that long ago when 90% of the population were farmers and a small percentage of people were city dwellers. As more and more land becomes developed we leave less for our food resources and the future resources for our children.

Perhaps we would be wise to try and conserve as many of the existing farms as we can. And the next time you think farms are great just as long as they aren’t in your back yard you might consider what you will eat if we get rid of all the farms. Why not give the farmers the respect they deserve. They do an awful lot of work for very little money. I think it’s time we all appreciated the importance of farming.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.