Proclamation 4269—National Farm Safety Week, 1974

Every one of America's farmers produces enough food to feed 50 other people. Our agricultural productivity plays a fundamental role in our country's international leadership as it enables us to provide assistance to other less fortunate nations and it frees so many in our society for other economic and social efforts which benefit America and the world.

As in every other crucial industry, job safety is essential to the maintenance of high agricultural productivity. But we are concerned with more than productivity alone. Every year farm accidents produce serious injuries and result in the loss of thousands of lives. The financial cost in lost time, production, and medical and property expenses runs into billions of dollars. The cost in human suffering is incalculable.

This needless waste of precious human and economic resources must be and can be sharply reduced through careful attention to basic safety precautions. As we act to provide the food and fibre that feeds and clothes Americans and many people around the world, I urge that we also act to protect the lives of the farmers and farm workers of America through more careful attention to farm safety.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week beginning July 25, 1974, as National Farm Safety Week. During this week and in the ensuing year, I urge all who reside on farms and ranches to employ every needed safety precaution and practice, at work, at home, and in recreation. Further, I ask those who work with and serve farm and ranch people to support them in accident-reducing efforts by providing encouragement, information and education. We must become as effective at reducing accident losses as we have become in increasing agricultural production.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-eighth.

RICHARD NIXON