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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 21, 2018)
Page 4A East Oregonian Wednesday, March 21, 2018 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor Founded October 16, 1875 OUR VIEW Ag Week: Farmers have strong impact Each American farmer feeds more than 144 people — a dramatic increase from 25 people in the 1960s. Quite simply, American agriculture is doing more and doing it better. As the world population soars, there is an even greater demand for the food and fiber produced in this country. For 45 years, National Ag Day has recognized and celebrated the abundance provided by American agriculture. Each spring, producers, agricultural associations, corporation, universities, government agencies and others across the country join together in recognition — and appreciation — of agriculture in our country. This year it was officially celebrated Tuesday. But we’re preaching to the choir here in farm country about the work farmers do to keep us well fed at an affordable price.We also know how they support their communities, purchasing equipment and donating to a wide variety of good causes. But on National Ag Day, we learned plenty of information we didn’t know, and we decided to share some from the National Agriculture Council with you: Did you know? • Hamburger meat from a single steer will make about 720 quarter pound hamburger patties. That’s enough for a family of four to enjoy hamburgers each day for nearly six months. Courtesy Audra Mulkern Kylie Gray of Gray Girl Farms in Othello, Wash, balances being a farmer and a mom. • Straight from the cow, the temperature of cow’s milk is about 97 degrees Fahrenheit. • Farmers and ranchers provide food and habitat for 75 percent of the nation’s wildlife. • An acre of trees can remove about 13 tons of dust and gases every year from the surrounding environment. • Americans eat about 125 pounds of potatoes a year, about half from fresh potatoes and half in processed foods. • Onions contain a mild antibiotic that fights infections, soothes burns, tames bee stings and relieves the itch of athletes foot. • One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of pop. • A family of four could live for 10 years off the bread produced by one acre of wheat. • Each American consumes, on average, 53 pounds of bread per year. • Heart valves from hogs are used to replace damaged or diseased human heart valves. • One acre of soybeans can produce 82,368 crayons. • One bale of cotton can produce 1,217 men’s T-shirts or 313,600 $100 bills. • Honeybees must tap 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey. Each worker honey bee makes 1/12th teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. • Cotton is a food crop. Almost 200 million gallons of cottonseed oil are used in food products such as margarine and salad dressing. Cottonseed and cottonseed meal are used in feed for livestock and poultry. And even products such as toothpaste, ice cream, and the paper money used to buy them contain by-products of the cotton seed. • It takes just 40 days for most Americans to earn enough money to pay for their food supply for the entire year. In comparison with the 129 days it takes the average American to earn enough money to pay federal, state and local taxes for the year. • More than 96 billion pounds of edible “surplus” food is thrown away in the U.S. Each year. It is estimated that almost 27 percent of our food supply is wasted. OTHER VIEWS What holds America together L OTHER VIEWS BMCC ag connects industry to education By ANNE LIVINGSTON Blue Mountain Community College A griculture is a big player in the eastern Oregon economy. More than 37 percent of the workforce in Umatilla County is either directly or indirectly employed by the agriculture industry. And farm sales in Umatilla County exceed $1 billion annually. As the industry continues to grow and become more technologically advanced, producers are finding that working together with a local community college is a wise investment in fortifying their employee teams. The Blue Mountain Community College agriculture department works closely with the eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington region’s ag industry. Training and education is built to suit the needs of agriculture. In the last year, crop producers, irrigation specialists, suppliers and others have worked with BMCC to provide a series of short workshops in specialty areas to advance the knowledge and skills of those already in the workforce. Eight workshops were developed on topics ranging from agricultural safety to soils, irrigation design to base stations and controls, moisture monitoring and remote sensing to managing crop production through proper use of irrigation technology. One workshop focused on welding. The workshops were scheduled through November and February on Fridays for four hours each. The format of these workshops met the industry need both in length and the “offseason” time of year. Each of the four workshops in February were delivered using Internet technology (Zoom) which allowed students to benefit from the classes without having to travel. Students ranged in age from 16-75 and participated from as far away as Parma, Idaho, and Othello, Wash. Most workshops averaged 18 participants. BMCC has plans to continue these workshops. And with continued input from ag industry managers and their BMCC ag advisory board, plans to expand the curriculum to include more topics and students next winter. In the meantime, BMCC’s Precision Irrigated Agriculture Facility, located on the Oregon State University Hermiston Agricultural Research and Experiment Center, and the Facility for Agricultural Resource Management on the BMCC Pendleton campus has traditionally formatted courses that focus on a long list of agricultural topics. Traditional and nontraditional students know that BMCC is connected with industry employee managers, and BMCC is connecting these students with the education they need to keep up with an agriculture industry that is changing every day. ■ Anne Livingston is the director of Marketing for Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton. Farm sales in Umatilla County exceed $1 billion annually. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. ast week I went to Houston Americans had no way to see how to see the rodeo. That rodeo their daily exertions contributed is not like other rodeos. It’s to a common spiritual cause. They gigantic. It goes for 20 days. There saw no way to achieve individual can be up to 185,000 people on the salvation through community effort. grounds in a single day and they are America has created a brilliant of all human types — rural ranchers, political constitution, Whitman Latino families, African immigrants, wrote. It has amassed untold wealth. drunken suburban housewives out But it has not created a democratic David for a night on the town. Brooks culture that captures, celebrates and ennobles the way average When you are lost in that sea of Comment Americans live day to day. varied humanity, you think: What “The problem of humanity on earth holds this nation together? all over the civilized world is social and The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same religious, and is to be finally met and treated experiment, the American experiment to by literature.” When there is no common draw people from around the world and to sense of mystical purpose, you end up with create the best society ever, to serve as a alienation, division, distrust, “universal model for all humankind. ennui,” a loss of faith in the American Unity can come only from a common project. “Never was there, perhaps, more dedication to this experiment. The hollowness at heart than at present, and here American consciousness can be formed in the United States,” he observed. only by the lab reports we give one another Whitman was not, however, pessimistic. about that experiment — the jeremiads, He had worked as a nurse during the Civil speeches, songs and conversations that War, watching men recover and die, and the describe what the experiment is for, where experience had given him illimitable faith it has failed and how it should proceed now. in the goodness of average citizens. Average One of my favorites of these lab reports American soldiers showed more fortitude, is Walt Whitman’s essay “Democratic religious devotion and grandeur than all the Vistas,” published in 1871. The purpose of storybook heroes, he wrote. They died not democracy, Whitman wrote, is not wealth, for glory, nor even to repel invasion, but out or even equality; it is the full flowering of of gratitude to have been included in the individuals. By dispersing responsibility to American experiment. They died “for an all adults, democracy “supplies a training emblem, a mere abstraction — for the life, school for making first class men.” It is the safety of the flag.” “life’s gymnasium.” It forges “freedom’s Whitman spent his life trying to athletes” — strong and equal women, spiritualize democratic life and reshape the courageous men, deep-souled people American imagination, to help working capable of governing themselves. people see the epic heroism all around them Whitman had hoped that the end of that unites the American spirit. the Civil War and Lincoln’s sacrificial He didn’t mind a little healthy rudeness, death would bring the nation together. what we would call the politically incorrect. But instead there was corruption, He thought that the cause of democracy is division, demoralization and inequality. sometimes aided not by “the best men only, For Whitman, America’s great foe was but sometimes more by those that provoke feudalism, the caste structure of Europe it — by the combats they arouse.” that Americans had rebelled against, but And above all, he pointed out that the that always threatened to grow back: “Of American experiment is young. It is just all dangers to a nation, as things exist in getting started. “Thus we presume to write, our day, there can be no greater one than as it were, upon things that exist not, and having certain portions of the people set travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. off from the rest by a line drawn — they But the throes of birth are upon us.” True not privileged as others, but degraded, democracy is still in the future. humiliated, made of no account.” So much of what he wrote rings true Whitman feared economic and social today: the need to see democratic life as feudalism, but above all he detested an exhilarating adventure, the terrible cultural and moral feudalism. He believed damage done when you tell groups that that writers, artists, musicians, poets they are of no account, the need for a and preachers were the real legislators unifying American mythos, the power of of mankind, and in America they were culture to provide that mythos and, above detached from the nitty-gritty American all, the reminder that this is still early days. We’re still a young country. The times may experience. They still looked back to be discouraging, but the full strength of Europe — to the parlor, the perfumed American democracy is still waiting to be courtier and the spirit of gentility — for born. their models of character, manners and ■ education. They looked down on America’s David Brooks became a New York Times democratic mass. That left a spiritual vacuum, he believed. Op-Ed columnist in 2003. The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.