I realize that the vast majority of Americans are now several generations removed from farming, so it shouldn’t come as any great surprise, when people display their lack of knowledge about agriculture.
When I’m visiting with urban people and they find out what I do for a living, I have to suppress the urge to correct them when they say something like, “Oh, so you raise cattles, do you?”
I’ve learned to smile as I reply, “Yes, I raise CATTLE.”
I’ve also developed the ability to restrain myself when I hear the occasional, “I don’t know why you work so hard farming when you can get all the food you would ever need at the local grocery store.”
That one is almost too much.
I obviously understand that we, as farmers, should take every opportunity to help educate an uninformed society about our business, but after what happened this morning, I wonder if it’s not too late.
Over the past few years, I’ve developed a routine of working the crossword puzzle from the local daily paper while I eat breakfast. I read somewhere that doing so will help keep my mind sharp as I enter my golden years. If I complete the puzzle before I finish eating, I’ll flip the page over and cipher through the Jumble as well. I enjoy it and I usually get a kick out of the little cartoon that accompanies the scrambled letters.
Today’s cartoon depicted the stereotypical image of a cartoon bull in the foreground, with two obvious cows across the fence. The caption referred to the bull as, “the male cow.” I almost choked on my last bite of eggs and bacon.
Handing the paper across the table to my wife, I instructed, “Please read today’s Jumble.”
“Male cow? I can’t believe someone would write that.”
Looking at the source, I found that the little cartoon originated in Los Angeles and was syndicated in hundreds of papers across the country. I would bet real money that the author wouldn’t know, or care, that all cows ARE female and the males are either bulls or steers.
My wife said, “The sad thing is, the person who captioned the cartoon isn’t ignorant. It would have only taken a few seconds to research what a male bovine is called. This is just laziness. Maybe you should write a letter.”
“I would,” I answered, “but 90 percent of the people wouldn’t even know what I was talking about, and the other 10 percent would think I had wasted my time talking about so much, well, male cow manure.”
