Iowa and ANF

"ANF. America Needs Farmers.

All of you Hawk fans see it on helmets, or on some T-shirt promoted by Iowa Farm Bureau, and think - man that's a pretty cool lightning bolt, but I wonder what it stands for?
 

Back in 1985, Hayden Fry started "America Needs Farmers" as a promotion to help our agricultural producers through the Farm Crisis. That was 29 years ago.

 

To help out our farmers during the crisis, the government provided direct payments, no matter whether they had a profitable or non-profitable crop. This past year, direct payments were taken away. Just because something made sense then, doesn't mean it makes sense now.

 

As a farmer myself, I find it a great misrepresentation that the University of Iowa is the primary supporter of this program. If you were to Google "Does the University of Iowa help Farmers?," your first two links would be - you guessed it - Iowa State University!

 

ISU is widely known as one of the premier agricultural colleges in the world. It offers majors ranging from Agronomy to Animal Science, and Ag Systems Technology to International Ag. What does Iowa offer its yearning farmers? They offer programs in Ag medicine and Occupational and Environmental Health. Sounds a lot like more medicine to me."

 

I ran across this on Crop Talk and thought it was interesting.

 

When I was a kid, I didn't even know where Iowa was.  It seemed like a far off place to me.  I wanted to study agriculture at Purdue which was a very far off place from Sardinia, Ohio where I grew up.  I didn't do all the steps it took to get there and ended up at Ohio State like my aunts and uncle.  They grew up in harder times than 1985 or today so I count my blessings.

 

Ed