By Mark Hoduski

Mark is an American history and civics teacher at Maranatha Academy in Shawnee, KS.

In the summer of 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote to fellow Founding Father John Jay, detailing the benefits of the agrarian life, "Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands." Clearly, Jefferson was enthralled with the rewards of farm life for both the individual and the nation as a whole.

Today, with less than three percent of Americans identified as farmers, it is worth exploring what benefits ninety-seven percent of Americans are missing. A truncated list of advantages associated with farming include, exposure to death, the development of a work ethic, and finally, the antithetical twins of pride and humility.

With two wars fast approaching the decade mark, it is critical for Americans to be able to relate to the death and suffering current soldiers and veterans have experienced. Sadly, there is little reason to expect people have anymore than a cursory understanding of war's consequences. Movies, TV, and the media in general, can do little more than convey a superficial conception of war.

Unlike the media, farming provides a tangible window into death. A stillborn calf, a trampled chick, or butchering animals for personal consumption or for market, all lend a reality to life's brevity, its occasional cruelty, and to death's certainty. A soldier of the Civil War or WWII eras, coming from a rural background, at least had an inkling of what awaited him on the battlefield, as did the electorate that sent them. Unlike America's agrarian ancestors, whose lifestyle provided an insightful gateway to understanding the reality of death, today’s urban populace has little more than a theoretical sensibility regarding the end of life.

Farm life also produces a work ethic that has positive cultural reverberations. Even in an era of mechanization, a farmer's day can last ten to twelve hours, with weekends and holidays serving as little more than artificial markers, established by a foreign, urbanized society. Such a lifestyle steels a person to expect only maximum effort will produce maximum results. Farmers know that bountiful crops are not the product of idle fancy, but rather the result of careful and patient cultivation. As a consequence, success is not seen as a birthright, but as a goal to achieve through personal and collective effort and sacrifice. Surely a concept Jefferson considered when he identified the virtues of farming.

Finally, the agrarian life engenders in its members both merited pride and enduring humility. Every farmer can take pride in the work of his hands; satisfied in the knowledge his labor produced the end results. Americans have long cherished the belief that individual initiative and hard work begets success and satisfaction, and with it, social contentment and stability that is amiable to the rule of law and representative government. Both Jeffersonian ends to be sure.

The farmer's justified pride is leavened with the humility that comes from the knowledge that nature and nature's God can quickly erase success with an inconvenient rain, a searing drought, or any of a multitude of natural disasters. Such pertinent strokes, remind a man that he is mortal and dependent on both Providence and his neighbor to overcome adversity. Humility is also essential to the cultivation of an egalitarian society where leaders are seen as public servants rather than self-aggrandizing aristocrats. Indeed, Jefferson depended on such rural offspring to rule the nation and avoid the vestiges of European elitism and societal stratification.

If then, farming as a profession is, as Jefferson wrote, “... the happiest we can follow, and the most important to our country," then some thought should be given to how an urban society can restore some of its forgotten virtues such as a greater awareness of death, and the acknowledgment of hard work's merit and its justifiable pride, tempered by the practice of humility.