Farming is a Profession of Hope

Farming is a profession of hope.

I came across this quote by Brian Brett (a farmer and writer from British Columbia) the other day, and it made me pause. Farming is a profession of hard work, of careful planning, of long hours, of worry, and (sometimes) of great success. But of hope?

Then I thought about it, and realized that putting a seed in the ground, watering it, and believing it will grow into something that can feed people may be the ultimate act of hope. Producing crops and raising animals, particularly during hard times, is a way of saying “I believe that things can be better and more abundant in the future.”

We can’t live without hope. Hope is essential to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being (check out this article on health and hope and why hope matters.)

Sometimes we forget about the hopeful potential in the future, or we see the bad in the world but forget to see the good. This can be dangerous—we need to hold on to hope. I’m not saying that we should expect that everything in the world becomes perfect and that we should all have perfectly happy and successful lives. But there is always something to be grateful for in the moment, something to look forward to and hope for, something that will remind us that circumstances can improve, that we can persist, that there is at least as much good in the world as bad.

For me, today, that “something” is a farmer, the person whose work always reminds us that there is hope. 

Yet another reason to thank a farmer.