Proclamation 4421—National Farm Safety Week, 1976

As we celebrate our Bicentennial Year, we reflect upon those factors which have propelled us from a virtual wilderness to our present position of world leadership. Beyond question, the achievements of our agricultural community are among the most important of these factors.

Dedicated farmers and ranchers, in partnership with the scientific, technical, and business communities, have pushed agricultural efficiency and productivity to unparal­leled heights. As a result, little more than four percent of our labor force is able to produce enough to make us the best-fed nation and to provide sustenance to countless millions around the world.

But it is not enough to honor our past. To meet the challenges of the future with confidence, we must be assured of an unfailing flow of agricultural products. The abil­ity of agriculture to fulfill these needs depends not only on sophisticated technology, but also upon the removal of impediments to production. We must not relax our con­cern about the fact that accidents are a major drain upon the human and economic resources of our agricultural community. Although the death rate from accidents in agriculture is declining, we must continue to press for the elimination of every preventable mishap that diminishes the strength and productivity of our farmers and ranchers.

Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week of July 25, 1976 through July 31, 1976, as National Farm Safety Week. I urge all who live and work on the Nation’s farms and ranches to make safety an integral part of all daily activities on the job and at play, at home and on the highway. I also urge those who work with and serve agricultural producers to make a special commitment during our two-hundredth birthday year to the task of helping to make rural America a truly safe place in which to live and work. I call upon all Americans to remember that we are blessed with a strong and viable agriculture, and that we must also keep it safe for ourselves and future generations.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth.

GERALD R. FORD