On Friday I noticed how all of the statues were covered to observe A Day Without Art and I got to thinking what it would be like to have a day without agriculture. Yes, a day without art is to recognize the future accomplishments of artists who have died from AIDS, but why not have a day to recognize agriculture for all of the farms that have been closed down and farmers who did not get to accomplish things?

On the day without ag you couldn’t use things related to agriculture. Now think about how it would be and what a day without ag would be like. Well, first off, everyone would be running around naked as a jaybird. Because almost every college student wears jeans or khakis and they are made from cotton.

Now to some people it may seem like a great thing to have everyone running around in their birthday suit, but do we really want to see everyone naked? There are just some people you do not want to see naked, people like me for instance. You could wear synthetic materials like polyester, but the leisure suit went out in the 1980s.

Well, you might be able to get by running around naked, but what about when you want to have lunch? Well in the day without agriculture we won’t get to eat anything because everything we eat comes from agriculture. No Big Macs or french fries from McDonald’s, because agriculture supplies the food for all of the fast food restaurants. Vegetarians and vegans will be in the same boat. If some farmer does not grow the lettuce, tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts or soybeans for tofu, there will be no salads.

There will also be no beer or any alcohol during this day because alcohol is also made with agriculture products. If you have seen the Budweiser commercial where they are harvesting the barley for the beer, you know how important agriculture is for all of the beer drinkers. No one gets to go out for beer blasts or two-fers on a day without ag.

So maybe a day without agriculture is starting to sound like a bad thing. You’d see this out-of-shape guy with a beer gut running around campus trying to convince women he is like Ron Jeremy, but you can’t throw up because you have no food in your stomach.

The next time you stop by the Memorial Union and eat at the food court, think about how the food got there. When I was in Collegiate FFA I spoke with a person who said they played a game where a person had to think about ten jobs that were associated with a sandwich from a fast food place. And all those jobs are affected by agriculture.

If we had a day without agriculture maybe people would see how important agriculture is. This university was started because of agriculture and it’s what put Ames on the map. Waterloo would not be as large as it is without the John Deere plant and there would not be the pork industry which creates thousands of jobs from working on farms to packing plants.

Agriculture is overlooked by people, just like art is, and many other things people take for granted. So take the time to remember agriculture the next time your tear into a big mouth-watering salad, enjoy that cold diet soda (made with corn syrup) or smoke an ultra-light cigarette, just remember – a day without agriculture would be day without everything.

Wesley Griffin is a senior in agricultural education from Grand River.