Thank You God, For All the Farmers…
Have you ever heard the Paul Harvey speech called “So God Made a Farmer”? He first delivered it in 1978 at an FFA convention. It resurfaced in 1986 in his column and again years later on the internet, then during Superbowl XLVII in the form of a Dodge Truck Commercial. When a superbowl commercial can make you proud, make you cry and make you fall in love with a truck I think the advertisers should get a bonus.
I’m not sure what made me think of that speech this morning. I wondered if writing one of our first official LandPro Equipment blog posts and titling it “Thank God for Farmers” was wise in a world so quick to hold people to politically correct standards. But frankly, if we stopped taking God out of our schools, playgrounds, workplaces and sports arenas maybe the people in those buildings would be quicker to kindness and slower to violence.
So today, the day after Thanksgiving (HAPPY THANKSGIVING!) we’re thanking farmers, thanking God for farmers and hopefully making you smile a little at some of the things we wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for farming.
1.) The Statue of Liberty - Elevators in the Statue of Liberty use a soybean-based hydraulic fluid.
2.) Milk, Cheese, Ice Cream…. Did I mention cheese? The average dairy cow produces seven gallons of milk a day, 2,100 pounds of milk a month, and 46,000 glasses of milk a year
3.) Wool Sweaters – Each sheep produces about 7.4 Pounds of wool per year.
4.) Crayons! Soybeans are an important ingredient for the production of crayons. In fact, one acre of soybeans can produce 82,368 crayons. Plus cornstarch gets the crayons out of the mold.
5.) Pasta - Last year, 1.3 million pounds of pasta were sold in American grocery stores. If you lined up 1.3 million pounds of 16 oz. spaghetti packages, it could circle the Earth almost nine times!
6.) Beer! Hops! Enough said right? US is responsible for more t
hat 28,000 Tons of hops grown. PS… Hops grow vertically up a line. This is a picture of one of our local Hops farms: R&D Janiga Enterprises.
7.) Jeans & T-Shirts – 17 US states grow 10 million acres of cotton that equals 14 million bales or 6.7 billion pounds of cotton... annually.
8.) Meat – Our farmers raise the meat we enjoy and grow the crops needed to feed them. Beef, Hogs and Chicken are primarily fed corn.
9.) JOBS! More than 21 million American workers (15 percent of the total U.S. workforce) in employed in the agriculture industry.
10.) Family Values – 2.2 Million farms exist in America today. 97% of them are family run.
We thank you farmers for all that you do and all we have because of your hard work and dedication.
Thank God for farmers…