By Jim Hagarty
2015
I grew up on a farm but something has always bothered me about signs urging non-farmers to be grateful for farmers. Today, as I drove by a farm, I saw a sign, “If you ate today, thank a farmer.” Other signs sport similar messages: “Farmers feed cities”, etc.
Well, you say, Old Jim’s really gone off the deep end now. How could anyone find anything offensive about those messages? But let’s put the car in reverse and back up: “If you farmed today, thank an eater.” “If you farmed today, thank a city.”
Farmers work their butts off but they are also sitting on properties that are worth many millions of dollars. And the writers of these signs don’t consider the possibility that what I ate today didn’t come from a farm at all. Maybe it came from a garden in my own back yard. Or maybe I gathered some berries and nuts from the trees on a stroll through a local forest.
But, if we’re going to thank people, consider these:
“If you read the instructions on the back of a fertilizer bag today, thank a teacher.”
“If you drove a tractor today, thank a scientist, an engineer, a mechanic and a factory worker.”
“If you built a barn today, thank a lumberjack.”
Enough.
