The Marion County Farm Bureau reports about 150 took advantage of a free breakfast held to celebrate National Agriculture Day on Tuesday.
Farm Bureau Manager Brad Conant says this is the 20th year for program designed to show how little farmers get out of the total cost of a meal purchased at a restaurant.
“It’s a group effort between our members of the board of directors, we’ve got good volunteers from young leaders and others,” Conant said. “We’ll have fifteen to twenty people here, and some of us have been here since 4:30 getting things going and getting breakfast warm. It takes kind of an all-hands-on-deck approach to get food for that many people, but we’re blessed to have great volunteers and we always have a good annual event.”
Meanwhile, Conant says there are lots of questions as farmers enter the new growing season led by the impact of tariffs.
“I don’t think we’ve seen all of the effects of that yet. I think a lot of the inputs and stuff were hopefully in place for this growing season. Hopefully it’s maybe a bit of short-term pain for long-term gain on some of this stuff,” Conant said. “As always, farming is an interesting career to be in. There’s always challenges between the weather, and the tariffs are just kind of the latest of those.”
Those attending the breakfast had a chance to make donations to several Farm Bureau programs.
Ag in the Classroom Teacher Meggan Heistand (front) and Marion County Farm Bureau Manager Brad Conant help cook Tuesday morning’s breakfast. Photo by Bruce Kropp.
