Ode To The Farmer

Farmers are some of the strongest, most intelligent  people I know.

To be a farmer, your have to be a vet, you have to know crop value, crop management, and crop yield. You have to understand the politics and the economics, you have to know how to take chances, keep faith, and rebuild an entire business if need be. You have to be good at check and balances, making investments, and turning a profit on all of it.

They have to understand irrigation systems, they have to understand machinery of all types to its full extent, not just how to operate it, but the mechanics of it as well. They have to understand GPS and geography, topography, and temporal zones. They have to understand chemicals, fertilizers, vaccinations,  and animal systems.

You have to be committed and motivated. Farmers are up in the dead of night, calving, making sure that their livestock is safe and healthy. Farmers have to feed the world. They are the key to civilization, agriculture is the staple. Farmers invest thousands of hours and dollars in producing a product that is deemed worthy of being marketed to the public. Farmers have a hand in producing every item of food.

Two percent of America is made up of commercial farmers. Of that 2%, 31% of all profit comes directly from exports. Farm budgets get lass then one half of one percent of the American Budget. That means that if the American Budget only had $100, Farmers would get pennies on a dollar.

With a steadily growing population and decreasing farm land, farmers are under more pressure than ever to produce a larger crop on less land, with a lower budget, and still keep it high quality for the public.

I do not aspire to be a farmer, but I live and work on one. There are a lot of rules and regulations that farmers have to follow and keep up with in order to have a product that the world population can safely and abundantly consume. I think that there is a huge misconception on farmers.

Farming is not an industry that has room to abuse their animals, because they need every dollar of profit. Farmers can not afford to break chemical or labor laws. Yes, there are some people who abuse their animals, just like their are parents that abuse their kids. It doesn't mean that all parents abuse their kind, in fact, majority of families do not abuse their kids. There are only a few farmers that abuse their animals.


I know that this is not like my typical blog posts, i just felt it was an important matter to address, especially since I love growing up on my farm.