In 1926, as National Grange master, L.J.Taber, former Director of Agriculture for Ohio traveled to Rome as a U.S. delegate to the International Institute of Agriculture and was selected to represent the English-speaking delegates at a banquet. Farm and Dairy reprinted part of his remarks.

They are worth repeating more than 90 years later.

“Agriculture is basic and fundamental; without it, there is neither food, fiber nor the hope of continued civilization. The farmer is the foundation upon which rests the whole superstructure of the world’s civilization. Our happiness, our prosperity, our future are dependent upon food and the product of the farmer’s toil.

“If we study the increase of the world population in the last 200 years, and even project it through another century, we must recognize that the wisest statesmanship and the most far-seeing vision of our greatest minds must, within the coming 100 years, be directed towards seeing that mankind may have its daily bread.

“There is much that governments can do, much that education and scientific agencies can accomplish and there is much left for individual organizations; but in the final analysis, the feeding of the nations is dependent upon the toilers in the fields, the farms, the gardens and the forests of the inhabited portions of the earth.

“Organized agriculture is bringing into being a new consciousness of the relationship of the farmers to their vocation and their larger responsibility to civilization. …

… Organized agriculture must lead the farmers, the business world and the financial world to a realization of their interdependence. Our interests are in concord and not in conflict. We will go forward or slip backward all together.

“Four major goals should have the hearty support of us all: Through education and scientific assistance to increase the efficiency of the individual producer; Through cooperative and collective action and through sound business operation to enlarge the financial reward of the farmer; To increase the efficiency and reduce the costs of government, because heavy taxation is a grievous burden to agriculture throughout the world; To conserve the fertility of the soil and of our natural resources for generations yet unborn.”