The fact that people in non-rural areas don't understand agriculture is more the fault of agriculture than anything else. Farm organizations, particularly on the national and state level, have never done enough to foster goodwill or understanding.

Santa Rosa County in western Florida hosts an ag day each year to introduce people to the county's ag industry. Different them each year. Sometimes it's cotton, other times its the forage and horse industry, other times it's vegetables.

I think they've been doing it for 40-plus years. The Extension director, Mike Donahoe, told me that this helps with general public's understanding and also reinforces the importance of the industry to political leaders, who often ride the school buses with the visitors. One side benefit is that this is a county with a military base, so they often get riders who are temporarily passing through the county during their careers, so they're influenced, too.

If your county isn't doing things like that you've got no room to complain about whether people in town understand what ag is all about. Yes, there always be hotheads, but PR campaigns like this are necessary. A couple of years ago the U.N. estimated that for the first time in human history more people live in non-rural areas than in the countryside.