There are people living in the large cities, even adult people, who have no idea where their food, milk, ice -cream treats, vegetables, and meat come from. At least that is the way many people act. “You go to the grocery store, WalMarts, Kroger, Ramey, Giant Foods, Piggly Wiggly, or whatever and you get what you want.”

While you can go to the grocery store, which is Oh, so convenient; there are farmers “breaking their backs”, and in many cases risking their lives in order that you might have food on your table, or in front of your television. Even many of the snacks that we eat today is food that has been prepared from crops, for you to have a ready to eat snack. Doritos, Potato chips, snack cakes – being made from flour, which requires wheat, and then there is the sugar in the cookies which is from farms as well. The Sugar farmer may prefer to call his place a Sugar Plantation, but it is none-the-less still a farm.

Many of the big farms may produce much milk, grain, and fruits and vegetables, and they make a good deal of money. Don’t dare think that farming is a lucrative business. Let me give you and idea of the money that is made in farming. A farmer may bring in a cash value of 200,000 dollars per year, but by the time they pay for the fuel of the tractor, farm labor costs, feed for the cattle, fuel for their other farm vehicles; the maintenance and upkeep of all farm machinery, etc.. After all the expenses and farm costs are paid the small farmer; if he is blessed; may have 20,000 dollars per year. And that would be a fairly good year.

After they have made that kind of profit [wow!!!:)], can you believe that, then the government wants to tax more than what they actually have in spendable income?

When farmers have a bad year with a drought all our government wants to offer them is a low interest loan. When farmers in the country of Columbia want to make a deal with the United States that’s a different situation. Our farmers can just suffer, but we can’t let foreigners farming suffer. We will take their meat, their crops, and pay them a great price for it; and at the expense of our own people.

I have heard in Hollywood productions and from people who don’t know much that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution. Well that is not true. The oldest and grandest profession and vocation is farming. There were farmers long before any woman or man ever thought of selling themselves for cash.

What makes a man or a woman want to be a farmer? Some grow up on the farm and don’t know much of anything else. They decide at an early age they want to take over the family farm, or have a farm of their own. There are some who grow up and go to Agricultural Schools/Colleges/Universities to learn more about farming, the soils, trees, and vegetables. They may come back to the farm to help make it more productive, and they may not. The outdoors, fresh air, fresh turned soil, and its fragrance, sunrises and sunsets, are all things that farmers enjoy. Not to mention the planting of the seed in that freshly worked soil, watching it come up through that dirt day later, then, weeks and months later it reaches its peak, and it bears fruit. From one little seed of grain comes thousands of seeds of grain. The farmer can look at that and thank the Lord for giving the increase, and thank Him also for giving him the strength to plant and harvest the crop. Farming is one vocation that gives a person a sense of worth, and accomplishment.

The next time you go through that grocery aisle, and you pick up a head of cabbage, or broccoli, or some Apples, Peaches, Oranges, or a can or frozen bag of peas; and a gallon of milk remember there were some farmers who rose early many mornings to get that milk and cheese to you; spent many hours plowing the ground preparing it for the seeds that produced that cabbage, broccoli and other veggies. Many Orchards spend hours protecting their trees from freezing in the seasons of their blooming in order that we might have fresh fruits. When you pick them up remember where it came from. It first of all came from God who gives the increase; and it came from hard working farmers who have given their lives to feed the American citizens and the world.

-Tim A. Blankenship