Family Farm Friday #67: Listen Here, Yahoo

"God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer!" ~ Paul Harvey, So God Made a Farmer

Okay, Yahoo news. You and I have a little bone to pick. Anyone read this article yesterday? It would be the one that deems a degree in Agriculture to be the #1 most useless degree in America. Um....really? I'll beg to differ.

Because this Agricultural Economics-Farm and Ranch Management major has a pretty kick ass job in a pretty kick ass law firm. And you know what else? This Agriculture major apparently learned enough while getting her "most useless" degree to wind up graduating first in her law school class. You know, ahead of all of those business, English, government, math, engineering---whatever else majors. And she had a job offer with one of the top 20 law firms in the country, which she turned down for a better offer (and closer proximity to her cows). Looks like the opposite of useless to me. And beyond that, Yahoo, do you realize that American Agriculture puts food on the tables of all of the other majors in the country? And we grow the products that put the suits on the backs of the finance majors and the costumes on the backs of the theater majors? So without our "useless" degrees, none of the other majors would even be able to exist.

I'm here to tell you, farmers and ranchers are some of the smartest, hardest working, most dedicated people I know. Period. How do I know? Because my family has been involved in agriculture for generations. We recently celebrated the 100 year anniversary of my great-grandparents' homestead. Looks like involvement in agriculture has been working for us for a century...

You learn these things growing up on a farm when you're out doing chores at 6:00 am before school and you spend your summer vacations working with show animals. Along with that hard work ethic, we learn to manage our money, to budget, and to balance a checkbook. I can think of a few non-agriculture majors in Washington, DC who might should have taken a lesson from a little FFA recordkeeping. We learn to care for animals and to put the needs of someone (or something) ahead of ourselves. We learn to be neighbors and to set an irrigation tube and to pick out bull semen. We learn to speak in public, the rules of pariliamentary procedure, to stand up for our opinion, and to dance a mean two step.

We take these lessons that we learned as kids and add to them when we go to college. The education I got in the Ag College at Oklahoma State was second to none in my opinion. Great professors, great courses, great experiences.

And so many of the concepts that we were taught are ones that can be applied in any field--like law for example--even if we don't end up working on a farm. My classmates have gone on to be lobbyists, lawyers, and doctors. To have careers in advertising, marketing, and public relations. They own their own businesses, they run banks and they are school administrators. They have become photographers, writers and broadcasters. And let's not forget the most important ones: farmers and ranchers.
For the life of me, I do not understand the media's need to bash on agriculture. Remember the last time I had to go off on this issue? I've said it before and I'll say it again--some people will never get it. We see the world differently.
As if feeding and clothing America is not enough, we now have to spend our time fighting the media? We'll get on that after the cows are fed, the ice is broke and the hay is hauled....meaning before most non-ag majors are out of bed.