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It’s a romantic view of farmers, but still it resonates with me. I grew up around farmers and the FFA and I don’t believe there’s a more important vocation on the planet. Farmers carry a lot of responsibilities, looking after the land, feeding their own families, and also producing food for the world. As I watched, I wondered why Dodge chose the Super Bowl to deliver that message of appreciation to farmers.

Maybe it was a show of solidarity after a hard year. First, there was the 2012 drought, one of the worst in recent history. Then, the House of Representatives and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) let farmers down everywhere when they dropped the ball and failed to get a five-year farm bill on the floor.

But for me the Super Bowl commercial evoked an important question: What is the most important role of farmers in our society? It has always been my belief that one of the most important duties is farming the land in a way that protects the earth, and maintains natural resources for the next generation. Liberty Hyde Bailey, a Michigan farmer’s son and agrarian philosopher who lived over a hundred years ago, put it this way:

“We shall conceive of the earth, which is the common habitation, as inviolable. One does not act rightly toward one’s fellows if one does not know how to act rightly toward the earth.” – Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Holy Earth, 1915

Most of the lifelong farmers that I know share Bailey’s views. However, high crop prices, combined with farm subsidies have created a situation that removes the natural risks of farming.  As a result, some farmers are draining wetlands, and grasslands are being plowed up in the Prairie Pothole Region and Great Plains.

We need farmers, and we need to help support farmers as they provide food for the world, while still promoting good stewardship of the land. Two things need to happen in 2013:

1. Congress needs to pass a farm bill.
2. The farm bill must contain a conservation compliance provision and a Sodsaver provision.  This will close the loophole that eliminates natural risks and rewards bad practices.

Please consider writing personally to your Senator and Congressional Representative about this issue, and let s/he know that this is an important issue to you, and why.

photo credit: Beth Pratt/NWF

Though the bison’s ancestors roamed the continent with saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths, he could not protect himself from expansion and was nearly wiped out in the late 1800s as the nation’s population moved West.

Millions of bison were slaughtered for sport, for their hides, to clear the plains for settlers and their livestock and to control the Plains tribes. Native Americans used the bison for food and clothing, shelter, tools and ceremonial implements – nearly everything to survive physically and spiritually.

Before their near extermination, an estimated 30 million to 60 million bison ranged from Canada to northern Mexico and from the Plains to Eastern forests. By about 1890, roughly 1,000 remained, including two dozen in Yellowstone National Park.

Now the tribes at Fort Peck and Fort Belknap are preparing for the arrival of 65 Yellowstone bison.

The American buffalo, also known as bison, has always held great meaning for American Indian people…buffalo represent their spirit and remind them of how their lives were once lived, free and in harmony with nature.  -the InterTribal Buffalo Council

credit: D. Forehand of Montana

6 Facts about Bison:

1) Bison are North America’s largest land animals. Mature bulls weigh up to 2,000 pounds and mature cows as much as 1,000 pounds.

2) A bison stands 6 – 6.5 feet tall and 10 – 12.5 feet long.

3) A bison’s hump is composed of muscle, supported by long vertebrae. It allows the animal to use its head to plow through snow.

4) Most of the 500,000 or so bison nationwide are raised as livestock on ranches. About 30,000 are managed for conservation in private and public herds.

5) Fossils and accounts from early travelers show that Yellowstone National Park is the only place in the U.S. where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times.

6) The Yellowstone herd is one of the few that remains genetically free of cattle genes.

Bison are finally making a comeback, and you can help. Symbolically adopt your own bison!