Believe it or not, I spent my formative years on a farm in Eudora, Mississippi, about 30 miles southwest of Memphis.
I grew up running barefoot through horse pastures and climbing fruit trees and riding horses bareback. Unlike the adult me, I didn’t care about dirt or mosquito bites or sunscreen or, well, nature. These days, nature makes me itch.
My grandparents raised horses and cows and tended an enormous vegetable garden that produced enough fresh vegetables for the entire extended Sexton family to live on year-round – fresh from the garden or canned for the winter months. At one time, they slaughtered a hog every year for bacon, sausage, and pork roasts. However, this practice ceased after my sisters and I were old enough to know what happened to the pig we fed every day. I’ll just say, none of us ate the bacon.
My point is, although I’ve spent the majority of my life living in the suburbs, I know that food does not magically appear on the grocery store shelves. I know that hard working farmers toil daylight to dusk every day of the year to grow crops for us to eat and, yes, be turned into clothing to wear.
Most everything in our everyday life is touched by agriculture in some way, even this newspaper you are reading started as a tree that was turned into pulp that was turned into newsprint.
There are more than two million farms in the United States, according to American Farm Bureau, and just one of those farms can feed 166 people each year. Of those two million farms, 87 percent of them are family-owned farms.
What surprised me most about the statistics I read, agriculture only makes up one percent of the United States’ gross domestic product, although the Department of Agriculture states that number does not include industries like food and beverage that use agricultural products in the manufacturing of other goods. Agriculture is ranked ninth in industry in the United States, with real estate as number one.
In Mississippi, Agriculture remains king, with nearly 30 percent of the state’s labor force working in the field in some capacity. According to “Growing Mississippi,” $6.3 billion dollars is generated annually by the state’s more than 41,000 farms, which span 11 million acres.
Of course, when I lived in DeSoto County, with its metropolitan shopping centers, business parks, and industrial centers, farming wasn’t on the forefront of economic development, but here in Carroll and Montgomery counties, agriculture isn’t just big business but THE business.
I married my own farm-raised boy from the Mississippi Delta. Keith grew up on Murphy Planation in Washington County, where his father was the farm manager.
He went on to Mississippi State where he majored in agriculture and currently serves an inspector for the Bureau of Plant Industry.
Living with Keith has given me an entirely new appreciation for agriculture and the regulations needed to help Mississippi’s largest industry thrive. I also have the best looking grass in the neighborhood – like a green carpet of St. Augustine. Since he quit farming his own land after moving to the area after our wedding, our lawn is his crop. I’m still working on the importance of flower gardening with him, but poor Keith grew up with the mindset that every available plot of land should be used to grow food.
Well, none of us would be eating if it weren’t for farmers. We’d also be wearing synthetic clothing or go naked.
Tuesday morning, I attended the annual Legislative Breakfast, sponsored by the Montgomery County Farm Bureau Federation, and I learned a little more about the importance of the agriculture industry and its impact on our state.
Living in a rural community like ours, it is easy to take for granted the hard-working farm families who grow cotton, corn, soybeans, row crops, timber, and livestock. Both Carroll and Montgomery counties benefit enormously from agriculture and the number of jobs the industry provides.
I hear about the need to bring more industry to our counties every day, and I agree, we should do all we can to grow our area and provide good paying jobs for those living here.
Just don’t forget about the state’s number one industry that plays a major role in everyday life in this community -- agriculture in all its many forms.
What’s the saying? “If you ate today, thank a farmer.”
