Farmers are backwards people. Some of them truly are from another generation and unwilling to change to the practicalities of modern society. Those people are ultimately getting left behind one day at a time.

To be a farmer means you have to reject some part of modern society that is very disconnected from nature and our natural world that ultimately sustains us. Farm people maybe rustic throw backs to another era, but they sure are essential to our society's well being. We all have to eat at the end of our day.

There are many things that push people away from farming. Hard work is one of them, but far more important is the economic poverty we put people in the farming class in. We rarely pay for people for the costs of the production except at a massive scale that turns farms into massive factories that pollute our air, land, and water. Schools also tend to encourage people to go into far more profitable lines of business that are suppose to be more modern then playing in the dirt and losing money one corn field at a time.

Farmers celebrate their backwardness in many ways. Farm culture with tractor pulls, John Deere t-shirts, fairs and agricultural expositions, and country music celebrates being rural and free. These people are somewhat different from other exurbanites, and indeed many people who aren't used to the smells and noises of farm life might even be upset with being around farms. The culture is generational and farmers seem to have their own exclusive clubs and lifestyles that separate from the rest of us.

We need to celebrate those who still work with their hands and feed us. From the poor laborer who works so hard all day long, to the farmer who stays up late trying to figure out how he's going to pay the bills and feed his own family, it's really tough to be contemptuousness for all that they do for us. Farmers and their workers simply do not get the respect that they so badly deserve.