It’s dawn in America and we’re all getting up and going on with our day. Going to work, going to school, going on vacation or maybe even staying home, but very few of us spend time thinking about where the necessities that will sustain our day and our very lives will come from. What a blessing that is, but it is also a curse. If we’re in agriculture, our getting up to go to work means we’re protecting our own “Thin Line.”

Yes, I’m alluding to the term “thin blue line,” representing the concept of our gallant police force across the United States as the frontline keeping society from descending into violence and chaos. In agriculture, we must realize we have our version of this. Since we, average Americans, don’t think about where our food, shelter or clothing comes from that much, it may not come naturally to ponder these concepts, but everyone in agriculture serving on the frontline becomes the protector of the THIN GREEN LINE that separates us from starvation and death.

What is the thin green line? We sing about America’s abundance and bounty in songs like America the Beautiful: “Amber Waves of Grain,” and “The Fruited Plains.” It happens in the places where food, feed, forage and fiber are grown and harvested. This is modern agriculture. Over the last 10,000 years, humans have been cultivating what we now enjoy as the most remarkable human accomplishment, food security through modern agriculture. The necessities of life seem to be available and affordable so much so that we don’t have to think about them. So why is that a curse?

The Curse

The curse comes in the form of experience and misinformation. Because most of us don’t work on a farm, and most people don’t raise their crops, we no longer can experience farm and ranch life firsthand. The joys and defeats of raising food, and the impacts that insects or weather can have on that food are not experiences that most of us have. On the misinformation side, much of the misunderstanding comes from not knowing what modern agriculture’s tools for advancement involve.

Several things make modern agriculture work. First and foremost is the natural world we live in. Farmers and ranchers, loggers and fishermen all tend to their crops and work with nature to harvest her bounty. However, severe weather, insects, plant and animal diseases, drought and wildlife all conspire to destroy or consume our basic necessities of life before they can be harvested and sold to us. Research, knowledge, hard work and technology are all essential to accomplishing this task of feeding everyone every day and supplying life’s basic necessities. Some examples of those technologies are mined and man-made fertilizers that help crops grow more abundantly. Some of those fertilizers are dug out of the ground in mines, like phosphate. Others are synthesized by man-made processes.  These man-made fertilizers work just like naturally occurring fertilizers (manure) in supplying plant nutrients. Plant life is agnostic and will take up nutrients wherever they come from.

Another important and carefully vetted technology is pesticides. These are tools that have been thoroughly researched and found to be safe if used as labeled, that keep diseases and insects from consuming or destroying your food before you get to eat it. Other technologies include improvements to seed through crossbreeding, and development of new seeds that grow crops that can defend themselves from various diseases without the use of pesticides, and the use of agricultural equipment that provides the opportunity for most people not to have to work on farms to grow their own food.

Another aspect of modern agriculture is the storage and delivery of irrigation water by efficient means, at the appropriate time, to food and feed crops. This provides so many of the healthy foods that we need in our diets every day, such as vegetables and fruit grown in California and Arizona with irrigation water, or tree fruits grown in Michigan, Washington State or Florida, and across America the Beautiful.

Science-based and proven practices of animal husbandry and veterinary medicine are additional tools in the agriculture toolkit. Responsible forest, Rangeland and fisheries management and harvesting are critical and if done right would prevent catastrophic fires we’ve become all too familiar with. There are many ways modern agriculture works so well for us that we rarely hear about! Again, this becomes the curse.

This is the thin green line that separates each and every one of us from starvation and death. It’s thin because our advantage over nature is a narrow advantage. It didn’t happen by accident. If you look back through your family history, all of us have ancestors who were farmers, loggers, fishermen, or ranchers. Sometimes for many generations in a row, our ancestors toiled to improve agriculture and make it modern agriculture.

We suffered through countless millennia prior to the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago. And while our ancestors suffered, they worked tirelessly in the hope of what modern agriculture would someday become in these last 150 years.

Only a fraction of our economy these days is based on food. This is remarkable given the importance of food to each one of us. Our entire economy hinges on the success of modern agriculture to keep food abundantly affordable, so that people have money to spend on every other segment of the economy. Modern agriculture made this so and should not be taken for granted. We did not get here by accident. We got here through science, hard work and continual efforts to improve what each generation did before us. The blessings we now enjoy could be easily lost due to the curse of not having the experiences of our ancestors, in addition to the misinformation we are currently subjected to.

The fragility of our “thin green line” is why Farm Bureau members are so important. We have a job to do, and it’s not just raising our livestock and our crops, or harvesting timber and fish, but rather effectively share why and how we do what we do. Every day, your membership dollars are working hard at the state capital and in our nation’s capital, advocating for good public policy. Every day your membership dollars are at work in classrooms across Arizona and across our nation teaching agriculture in the classroom. Every day your membership dollars are at work interacting with the press and promoting modern agriculture, telling our story accurately and completely.

However, there is always an opportunity to do more and that’s what I ask of each of you as members is to prepare yourself for those conversations about genetically engineered crops, responsible grazing and timber harvest, or the advances in pesticides or veterinary medicine with your friends and neighbors, or your congressman. Apply for Boot Camp or join PAL to learn about how you can most effectively share what you know that everyone else needs to hear about modern agriculture, all efforts to push back the misinformation and help Americans that have no experience with farming and ranching at least appreciate and understand the industry better.

Thank you for your membership in our organization, and I ask you, “What you can do to help ensure that modern agriculture is a blessing that continues for generations?” The Answer: Stay engaged so this huge blessing called “modern agriculture” doesn’t become a curse to those that benefit from it most. If we don’t get this right, those amongst us with the most modest means are the most vulnerable by bad public policy and misinformation about agriculture.

We have work to do. Join us in protecting the “Thin Green Line!”