National Ag Week

“Growing a Climate for Tomorrow” can mean different things to different people. For farmers and ranchers, it means growing food to feed their families, people in the urban areas as well as those in other countries. Many of the farmers and ranchers growing food are doing so on land that has been in their family for several generations.

When you’ve worked the land for decades, you have to learn a lot about your piece of ground. This is particularly true here in Wyoming.

Climate and weather conditions can vary a lot from one part of your ranch or farm to another. In areas where livestock are raised on our high plains or deserts and then move to our high mountains, these farmers and ranchers have learned that nature can vary from one year to the next. They have also learned conditions will vary greatly from the desert regions to the mountain regions.

Knowing how to deal with these challenges is something a person doesn’t learn overnight. Certainly, those early Wyoming pioneers faced some daunting times in learning about all the “new” challenges they didn’t have to face back from where they migrated.

As time went by, some couldn’t learn fast enough and they were replaced by those who could. Today, those folks are still learning. Those who remain continue to raise crops and livestock that contribute to feeding our growing population.

Make no mistake, we must continually learn or we may experience food shortages. As the old saying goes, “when you have an abundance of food you have many problems, but when you have a shortage of food, you only have one problem.”

Growing crops when there are water shortages can be difficult, yet many of our farmers and ranchers have adopted irrigation processes that grow more with less. In the early days of Wyoming, water was diverted from streams and rivers and used to raise food for Wyoming citizens and the surplus was sent to other areas in the U.S. that needed the food.

As farmers learned which crops work best in our climate and as scientists developed new varieties that were better suited to a climate like Wyoming, farmers and ranchers became more efficient with their water. At the same time ranchers were identifying which cattle or sheep did better in the conditions they had on their ranches and raised livestock better adapted to the land.

As these animals were becoming better adapted to their conditions more pounds of beef or lamb were raised on the same amount of forage.

Growing food in a climate like Wyoming requires dedication, education, and perseverance to make it to tomorrow. Wyoming farmers and ranchers have shown they are up to the challenge both yesterday, today and tomorrow.

“Agriculture: Growing a Climate for Tomorrow” – Celebrating National Agriculture Week 2024! The Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation invites all Wyomingites to celebrate agriculture and learn more about its role in your daily lives and recognize the issues impacting agriculture. We proudly celebrate Wyoming agriculture and its people every day of the year and specifically on National Agriculture Day, March 19, 2024.

The Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation mission is to represent the voices of Wyoming farmers and ranchers through grassroots policy development while focusing on protecting private property rights, strengthening agriculture, and supporting farm and ranch families through advocacy, education and leadership development. Visit us at wyfb.org.