Ag Day Every Day
Author
Published
3/7/2012
One of the tweets in my
@IowaFarmWriter TwitterFeed today declared: “It’s Nat’l Ag Week! Ag Day is Thursday! How r u celebrating?”
Huh. It definitely made me think. I hadn’t really made any celebration plans. I didn’t plan a party or send out a “Happy Ag Week!” greeting card to anyone. No one gets the day off of work and no one brought in an Ag Week cake to work.
So how DOES someone recognize Ag Week?
Ag Week’s purpose is to realize the work of the American farmer and how the ag industry feed and fuels people. So I took a look at how ag is in my life.
How about breakfast? Scrambled eggs were on the menu. That’s a definite tie to farming. And did you know that Iowa leads the nation in the production of eggs?
And getting ready for the day, it’s refreshing to realize the ag products that are used in “everyday” things such as soap, shampoo, clothing, cosmetics, medicine and more.
How about my drive to work? I drove my husband’s vehicle, filled up with E-85 fuel. There’s ag again. Ethanol is made from corn and Iowa leads the nation in the production of corn. (And is also number one in the production of ethanol.)
At lunch, I had my “regular”: turkey on multigrain bread. It’s very likely that my turkey meat came from turkeys raised in Iowa, as most of Iowa’s turkey meat production isn’t for that big Thanksgiving bird, but for Subway and companies selling deli meats.
And I just had two vanilla crème cookies as a snack and, upon further inspection, yep! There’s ag In them, too, in the form of soybean oil. (And yes, Iowa farmers grow the most soybeans in the nation, too.)
My day is half over and I’m already surrounded by stuff grown by Iowa farmers. And this is just a typical day, so, really…it’s Ag Day every day. And Iowa farmers do what they do every single day, so every day is Ag Day for them, too. It’s just a good idea to think about it every now and then and even to celebrate it at least once a year.
So Happy Ag Week and have a great Ag Day on Thursday! (Maybe a cake at work wouldn’t hurt…)
Written by Heather Lilienthal
Heather is a communications specialist with the Iowa Farm Bureau.
Huh. It definitely made me think. I hadn’t really made any celebration plans. I didn’t plan a party or send out a “Happy Ag Week!” greeting card to anyone. No one gets the day off of work and no one brought in an Ag Week cake to work.
So how DOES someone recognize Ag Week?
Ag Week’s purpose is to realize the work of the American farmer and how the ag industry feed and fuels people. So I took a look at how ag is in my life.
How about breakfast? Scrambled eggs were on the menu. That’s a definite tie to farming. And did you know that Iowa leads the nation in the production of eggs?
And getting ready for the day, it’s refreshing to realize the ag products that are used in “everyday” things such as soap, shampoo, clothing, cosmetics, medicine and more.
How about my drive to work? I drove my husband’s vehicle, filled up with E-85 fuel. There’s ag again. Ethanol is made from corn and Iowa leads the nation in the production of corn. (And is also number one in the production of ethanol.)
At lunch, I had my “regular”: turkey on multigrain bread. It’s very likely that my turkey meat came from turkeys raised in Iowa, as most of Iowa’s turkey meat production isn’t for that big Thanksgiving bird, but for Subway and companies selling deli meats.
And I just had two vanilla crème cookies as a snack and, upon further inspection, yep! There’s ag In them, too, in the form of soybean oil. (And yes, Iowa farmers grow the most soybeans in the nation, too.)
My day is half over and I’m already surrounded by stuff grown by Iowa farmers. And this is just a typical day, so, really…it’s Ag Day every day. And Iowa farmers do what they do every single day, so every day is Ag Day for them, too. It’s just a good idea to think about it every now and then and even to celebrate it at least once a year.
So Happy Ag Week and have a great Ag Day on Thursday! (Maybe a cake at work wouldn’t hurt…)
Written by Heather Lilienthal
Heather is a communications specialist with the Iowa Farm Bureau.