Proclamation 4197—National Farm Safety Week

The unfailing supply of food and fiber provided by the Nation's largest industry, agriculture, has been a foundation of American prosperity since our country's beginnings. Abundance on the farm, in turn, has been stimulated by constant technological progress. But the blessings of technology have sometimes been mixed, as each advance has also brought a new potential for injury.

Each year, many thousands of farm and ranch residents are killed or seriously injured in work, home, recreation and highway mishaps. For the most part, these accidents could be prevented if basic safety precautions were observed.

The dollar cost of rural accidents is high, but there is no higher price than the human suffering. This waste of precious human and economic resources must be reduced and can be reduced. The same energies and talents which have made agriculture so highly productive should also be turned to the task of making it safer.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning July 25, 1973, as National Farm Safety Week. I urge all persons engaged in farming and ranching to consider ways in which they can promote safer practices in work, home, and recreational activities, and can exercise greater caution when traveling on public roads. Further, I call upon community leaders, private organizations, and the communications media to assist in providing safety information so that we can be as effective in promoting safety on the farm as we have been in promoting abundance on the farm.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this thirteenth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

RICHARD NIXON