Cyndi's Two Cents

Thank America’s farmers for safe, abundant food supply

Commentary.

For many of us, food is the centerpiece of all family and social gatherings. For as long as I can remember, the food at our family gatherings was always tastier than that I might sample at gatherings of some of my friends’ families. Perhaps that is partially because of the happy memories associated with our family gatherings, but I think there is more to it than that. I believe it has something to do with the fact that much of what is laid out at a family “spread” is home grown.

Beef that we’ve raised is always better than the best steak at the best restaurant. When I think back of gatherings from my childhood, I can remember going to Aunt Vicki and Uncle Melvin’s on a Sunday with the smell of fried chicken and green beans with bacon greeting us as we entered the house. (Those were home grown chickens and green beans of course.)

My husband and I now cook our home raised beef roasts in the Dutch oven in which Grandma Doris used to cook her home raised beef roasts. I have such fond memories of Sunday gatherings with twenty-some cousins running and jumping, playing softball or tag or kick-the-can. Kids ate big and played hard. Adults ate big and worked hard. Our play and our work were of a physical nature, however, and we burned the extra calories consumed at a big family function in short order.

Deciding what to take to carry-in meal today presents more challenges than it did not so many years ago. Part of that is because of the abundance of food available to us today. We don’t have to bake our bread or brew our own tea or grow our own potatoes to make potato salad. I can go to Hy-Vee and buy any quantity of ready-to-serve potato salad I want to buy!

Grocery stores, farmers markets, convenience stores “dollar” stores all carry food items today. I can grab a pizza and milk when I stop to get fuel on my way home from town. The behemoth stores where you can buy shoes, get your oil changed, fill your prescriptions, get a haircut, have your nails done, sign up for internet and mobile phone service and have your taxes done also have groceries.

We can buy a variety of fruits and vegetables any time of the year, or we can choose to buy only what is locally grown, in season.

A safe, abundant, and affordable food supply is at the tip of our fingers. We can thank you, America’s farmers, for that.

Happy New Year.

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