Sixty years ago, I began working in horticulture. I assure you I did not know what horticulture was or how to pronounce it but, I was old enough to pick vegetables and, I quickly learned if a tomato, cucumber, bean or pea was ready to harvest.
I may have only been 4 years old but I had graduated from playing in the shade at the end of the field while watching my parents and siblings work and little did I realize that I would never go back or have it “made in the shade” ever again. Dad loved to farm and always had a gleam in his eyes this time of year, harvest time.
Daddy sold some of the crop but most went to feed me and my eight brothers and sisters. All I can remember is my sore fingers because after picking bushel upon bushel we would do the messy peeling and shucking on our screened-in back porch where the acid of the tomatoes ate away my fingertips. Then we would shell or snap beans and peas at night, again tearing away at my fingernails, while we watched “Mission Impossible,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and wrestling.
I guess you could call this my “moonlighting or weekend job” because during the week I picked cotton or butterbeans from sunup to sundown on Granddaddy’s farm. To add to all of this, when I reached 10 years old I began working at McLeod’s Peach Shed in McBee, where I learned more about fruits, vegetables, and row crops and earned enough money to pay my way through Clemson University to learn more about farming.
Since then I have done work in research, extension, on farms and, farm advising, but I still learn every day about growing plants and farming. Today farming is high tech, mentally and physically exhausting and, in my opinion the greatest challenge on earth. If you think operating a factory under a roof, within walls, air conditioned, with consistent inputs and products is difficult, consider a farm as an external factory with rain, wind, hail, heat, cold, with living constantly changing inputs and products.
Even small farms are mega businesses in today’s economy. Collectively farmers invest and risk more money than any other business on earth. In fact, agri-business makes up the No. 1 sector of our state’s and nation’s economy.
Next, farming has more regulations than any other business on the face of the earth. For instance, one of my favorite sayings is “The Label is the Law.” If you have ever read a label for any pesticide you may have some inkling of their complexity. A farmer must know and follow every label for all the pesticides he uses to produce crops — without mistake. Finally, farmers carry the burden of all our lives on their shoulders. In fact, most people on earth would soon die (within six months) if he and his cohorts quite farming.
This is why I cringe every time I hear someone, who had never even played at the end of a crop field or dedicated their life to ag such as a politician, reporter, homeowner, or even a doctor (shut up, Dr. Oz), tell the agricultural world how they should be farming or feeding the 7-plus billion people in the world. Most do not understand how complicated and important but, at the same time, fragile, our food supply system really is. We got a little taste of this with the COVID-19 scare. Please never talk bad about farming and farmers with your mouth full.
Tony Melton
The Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service offers its programs to people of all ages, regardless of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, disability, political belief, sexual orientation, marital or family status and is an equal opportunity employer.
