Thankful for the Farmers

When was the last time you worried, “What are we going to eat?”

I do not mean “what” as in that most difficult choice between Panera Bread or Jersey Mike’s. I mean “what” as in, “What food do I have today to feed my family?”

In our modern day, in America, our biggest food annoyance is often that we don’t have the choice we want, not that we don’t have food to eat. I’m sure you have witnessed the pitiful sight of a “starving” teenager standing in front of a full refrigerator loudly proclaiming, “There’s nothing to eat around here!” (I’m afraid I have been guilty of the same…)

We forget (or do not know) that this is not the way it has always been. Ours is the most prosperous and provided-for society in history. Throughout most of history, the main concern for the majority of the world’s population was finding enough food to keep from starving. (As a side note, think about how often stories in the Bible are centered around food—some examples are Joseph and corn, Israelites and manna, Ruth and wheat, Elijah fed by ravens, Jesus and fish and bread, etc.—ancient cultures were very concerned with having enough to eat, and this is demonstrated throughout the ancient stories in the Bible.) The modern day grocery store that we take so for granted is truly a modern miracle that the ancients would never have even dreamed of.

We in America in 2023 are blessed in countless ways.  One of those ways is in the area of food.

But all of this food we have so readily available does not happen by accident. There is so much to consider when thinking about how we got here as a society. What I want to point out is the American farmer. On this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the farmers.

Our family lives in rural Illinois, surrounded by farming communities. Most of our church family is comprised of farming families, and I have learned many fascinating facts about modern farming from them. I am reminded every day of the blessing of food supply in this nation, as I drive by a good sized grain elevator when heading into our town. This year, the farmers have had an unusually abundant crop of corn and soybeans (despite a long period of drought early in the summer, a testimony to the amazing advancements in seed production and agricultural sciences), and the elevators show it! The massive grain bins filled up quickly, and then giant piles of corn began appearing out in front of the elevators, as there was no more room in the large bins. The farmers truck the harvest in to the elevators by the semi-load, and then long trains come through to fill up with the grain and distribute it.

Through the summer here, we witness miles and miles of beautiful fields of corn and soybeans, as far as the eye can see. This past summer, two of my boys were able to work for a local farmer doing some “bean walking” in soybean fields (a process of pulling residual weeds the old fashioned way) and probably saw more soybeans than they really wanted to. It is a joy to watch all of these fields grow up each year, and then to watch the harvest come in. During the harvest season we hear the large combines in the early hours of the morning, and see the lights in the fields well after the sun has set. (How meaningful it is to sing “raise the song of harvest home” in a church full of grateful farmers who humbly pray, “Thank you God, for this amazing harvest.”)

Did you know that the U.S. ranks among the top producers of food in the world? Just 1% of the total employed population is employed in the field of agriculture. The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of corn. Our state of Illinois is the second largest producer of corn among the 50 states, just behind our neighboring state of Iowa.

Farmers in America, and all over the world, produce and harvest the foods we eat every day. They know from experience how dependent we all are on God’s blessings each season. Though mankind continues to take dominion over God’s good earth and has made amazing advancements in food production, we are still completely dependent on the rain and sunshine.

And we as a society often forget just how dependent we are on the farmers and their families. Most of us do not produce our own food for our own families, though I am certainly not opposed to that at all. With our kitchen full of family, I sure am thankful for those who work hard every day to give us a kitchen full of food, growing the crops my loved ones need to eat.

So on this Thanksgiving, as we gather around the turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, I’ll be thanking the Lord for the farmers!