CCFB News» March 2018

As our logo stares back at me from the computer screen, I can’t help but reflect on how these three words - Food, Farm, Family - came together in a most significant way last month.  Farmers growing food, food feeding families.  Seems simple enough. 

It takes a way more circuitous route when you look at it through the eyes of Food Checkout Day’s School Food Drive. Food reaching families who are facing most challenging circumstances.  The heroes of this story are too many to name, but I will take a moment to salute the schools and communities who rallied around this cause once again this year as part of our School Food Drive. Thank you.

Thank you also to the Ronald McDonald Charities® whose reach extends to 64 countries and regions throughout the world.  Thank you to farmers who grow the food and to the schools who donated bag after bag, box after box of items. 

And thank you to the farmers who reach families every day and not just in what we eat.

As our “wish list” for the drive this year included tissues, paper towels, laundry detergent and toothpaste, it was farmers who supplied the needed ingredients to produce these items.  Thank you to tree farmers, livestock farmers, grain farmers and farmers devoting their lives to produce products we all use.  

We don’t often think about agriculture when grabbing a paper towel or squeezing out that toothpaste, but we should.  As we always do in ag literacy, we took this opportunity to continue to educate about the impact of agriculture in our everyday lives. 

Toss in a load of laundry and know that agriculture is attached to it.  It may be the ingredients in the detergent, the cotton in your jeans, the buttons on your shirts or the wool in your socks.  We also can credit agriculture for the stains on your clothes that may have come from beets, grass, or other ag products. 

We may need to add the word fantastic to our logo as the farmers, their food and many families did a fantastic job helping others.