Proclamation 6477—National Farm-City Week, 1992

The tremendous productivity of America's farms has been a great blessing to this Nation and to millions of people around the world. As our leading industry, agriculture has fueled America's strength and progress while, at the same time, making the United States the world's largest exporter of food products and its ,ost generous provider of food aid. The week that ends on Thanksgiving is, therefore, a fitting time to saluate our farmers and all those Americans who work in partnership with them to bring the Lord's bounty from the fields to our families' tables.

While the United States enjoys a wealth of god-given resources, from hospitable climates to rich, fertile soils, the key to our agricultural productivity is the ingenuity and skill of our farmers and the fundamental efficiency and fairness of our free enterprise system. On average, one American farmer currently produces food and fiber for 129 people--a number that continues to increase. One of every three acres planted in this country produces crops for export. As a result of such efficiency and productivity, we in the United States can purchase our food with a smaller percentage of our disposable income than citizens of any country. This enables us to use the remainder of our income to purchase other goods and services and to save and invest for the future. Together, these factors help the United States to maintain the highest standard of living in the world.

America's farmers are joined in their efforts by millions of other men and women who have, in a snse, put their hands to the plow in a competitive, market-based system that provides farmers with production supplies and related services, then processess, packages, and transports agricultural goods to retail markets across the United States and around the world. This sytem includes researchers in our Land Grant universities and private Companies, who are developing ever-safer and more effective fertilizers, technologies, and pest control methods. It also includes specialists who ensure crop quality and manufacturers who transform raw materials into usable products, form breakfast cereals to grain-based alternative fuels. Form wholesalers and distributors to local retailers, a vast network of men and women completes the partnership that begins in our rural communities and extends to our largest urban ares. For nearly 40 years now, we Americans have observed National Farm-City Week in celebration of this partnership and in grateful recognition of the more than 20 million Americans who make it woek so well for all us.

Now, Therefore, I, George Bush, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the uathority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of November 20 through November 26, 1992, as National Farm-City Week. I encourage all Americans, in rural and urban communities alike, to join in recognizing the accomplishments of our farmers and all those hardworking individuals who cooperate in producing the abundance of agricultural goods that strengthen and enrich the United States.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-third day of September, in the year of our Lord ninteen hundred and ninety-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and seventeenth.

GEORGE BUSH