Brenda Schoepp wrote, “Once in your life you may need a doctor, a lawyer, a policeman, and a preacher but every day, three times a day, you need a farmer.” ‘Three times a day, you need a farmer’ – a phrase that says a lot.

It’s easy to forget where what we consume comes from. Many products we use every single day were not created by a machine, they were carefully grown, cultivated, and manufactured by the farmers of our community. Farmers all over the continent provide us with raw materials for food and other products. They work so hard, waking up at the crack of dawn, laboring in the boiling heat, and dealing with the ups and downs of agriculture to put clothes on our backs and food on our table.

Farmers provide us with cotton, wool, flax, hemp, and leather needed for garment production. Without farmers, people would be missing many primary components of their life. Not only do they provide us with food and clothing, farmers also provide basic commodities like the tires that drive people to their jobs or school, the tea or coffee people drink in the morning, products in medicine, oil, and natural gas. All of these things are necessities needed to get people through their every day life.

Palmetto student Aaliana Augustin says, “I didn’t know farmers provided us with all of that, it gives me more of an appreciation for them.”

Farmers are the backbone of our society. They help us in lots of ways, many of which we don’t even realize. The tires that take your car to school and work, the food on your dinner table, the clothes on your back, the medicine you take; all of it is connected and held together by farmers. Without them, society would not thrive. So today, thank a farmer, they provide us with the things we need.