Our family farming operation bleeds green. To any John Deere lover, you know what I mean. The tractors today are bigger, have more horsepower, more options and enable growers to accomplish so much more in a short amount of time. It wasn’t always so.
The top photo is a Mogul 8-16 breaking sod on our family’s farm in the early 1900s. This was McCormick’s (International Harvester) first attempt at a smaller tractor and was manufactured in 1915. It had one forward and reverse speed: 1.5 miles per hour.
The middle photo is a Titan 10-20, also an International Harvester, and was also built in about 1915. It had a maximum speed of 3 miles per hour. My grandmother’s family used this tractor to harrow 70 acres per day. (Brand new, the price was $950.)
Both the Mogul and the Titan ran on kerosene.
The bottom photo is a Farmall … my great grandfather’s first tractor he purchased in 1929.
Today’s equipment is built to cover more ground, more efficiently, in an effort to provide food for a growing domestic and world population. Just remember – bigger doesn’t mean ‘corporate’. It just means there’s a farmer out there working long hours, farming more acres, so that you can go to the grocery store and buy affordable, healthy food for your family. Farmers today just have more mouths to feed.
Until we walk again …
At the National Ag Day dinner in Washington, DC our keynote speaker was USDA Under Secretary Michael Scuse. He welcomed us to this day of celebration.
We’ve got youth in agriculture here at National Ag Day from just about every organization you can think of including the FFA. Introducing our lunch speaker today was Victor Salazar, Connecticut FFA state president. He was introduced by Orion Samuelson and I’m thinking that alone made an impression on him. But then it was his turn to do the introduction and he did an awesome job. I’ve got his intro on the audio file you can listen to below.
U.S. Representative Frank Lucas (R-OK), Chairman of the 
The man with the voice no one will forget, Orion Samuelson, WGN, emceed the National Ag Day Mix & Mingle Luncheon today. I spoke with Orion before the program got started to get his thoughts on Ag Day and learn what we’ll be doing this celebrate American agriculture day.
The official obituary has been 
Now in its sixth season, the PBS show shares the stories of America’s farmers and ranchers with a sophisticated public television viewing audience and is seeking production funding for its seventh season. To that end, the grassroots 
Students are getting a little training today for tomorrow’s National Ag Day activities. I am not there yet. In fact, the snow in Missouri caused my flight to be canceled. However, I’m now scheduled for a late flight out tonight. So I’m going to miss the reception this evening with Michael Peterson.