Abstract
PROF. N. M. COMBER in his presidential address to Section M (Agriculture), first deals with the lost appreciation of the status and prestige of farming. In peace-time and times of plenty, the majority of people use their food not merely as necessities of life b u ajsfc'as vtokens of goodwill and friendship. Men do not dine together for merely utilitarian purposes ; but they are largely oblivious to the reason why the products of the farming industry are used (as the products of no other industry are) to betoken the spiritual as well as the physical well-being of mankind. In times of war, when all minds are on farming, it is the necessity and not the glory of farming which is brought home to everybody. At no time, therefore, in the modern era are the majority of people able to appreciate the status of farming, which lies in the fact that it is inextricably connected with the status of human life itself and is fundamental in a way that no other industry is. In the midst of all the divergent opinions about the origin of human life, it has to be agreed that whatever the amount of divine authority by which men were created to be men, they were commissioned to be farmers by exactly the same amount of authority. Farming is all the time a fight against Nature, which itself does not provide human food, and it is in pursuing this life more than in any other way that the high qualities of human character have been developed.
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Farming, Science and Education. Nature 164, 395–396 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164395b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164395b0