Why you should thank a farmer

Being a thankful person is so important in the South. Expressing thanks to someone is such a great feeling. There are a lot of unsung heroes we encounter on a daily basis, and farmers are definitely some of them.

If you’ve ever read over a menu and come across the word “fresh,” you should thank a farmer. If you’ve ever been stuck behind a line of cars in a no passing zone, you should probably thank the farmer on his tractor at the front of the pack. And if you have ever been driving with the windows down on a hot July afternoon and you catch a smell of something not very pleasing, well, you should thank a farmer for that, too.

Farmers do a lot more for us than we realize and the end products don’t always show all the hard hours that go into the creation of it.

One Friday night in high school, in the locker room before a big football game, our Agriculture teacher gave us some encouraging words. He asked us to support farmers in our community and beyond – something he believed in, too. That’s when I learned the phrase “America Needs Farmers.” So with a small yellow sticker reading “ANF” on the back of our football helmets, we took the field and proudly displayed the message.

Being a farmer is one of those jobs in which you’re essentially on the clock at all times and receive few days off. Whether it is caring for livestock, tending to your crops, or keeping the equipment in top form, you can almost always find something that needs to be done. When it’s 100 degrees out, cows, pigs and chickens can get hot just like humans do. The farmer has to take care of them.

While there are so many professions that don’t get the thanks they deserve, being a farmer is one of them. Days are long and nights can be short when you’re racing against the sunrise to see who will be up first. And like I said before, it’s not always the best smelling profession.

Next time you’re out at a restaurant in your nice shirt and good shoes and you find you really enjoyed your steak dinner, know that it probably came from someone wearing boots with their favorite pair of faded jeans.

So, you should stop and thank a farmer.