By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, Gentle Readers:

Why do we need the rural West?

Hal Rothman, a cranium-for-rent (unfurnished) history teacher at the University of Nevada, asks why city people need the rural West. He says farms and ranches use 80 percent of the available water, while producing little taxable revenue. According to his thinking, if it doesn’t make money and lots of it, it has no value.

His comments surely make him the poster boy for goofy, urban pencil pushers who do, indeed, eat food grown on western farms and ranches. His leather shoes probably even come from western cattle.

There is no use trying to explain the facts of life to such as Rothman, but for those who still have good sense, let me give a few explanations:

Food doesn’t magically appear on the trucks that bring it to the store, nor does it grow on store shelves, including the store where the professor buys his food. It is grown on farms and ranches, by people who are unwilling to permit their children to grow up as idle, non-productive victims of stinky, noisy asphalt jungles, where road rage is one of the less malignant facets of everyday life.

One of the men on the governing body of a large university has said that the freshmen they have trouble with are city kids who have never done any useful work and have been given too much by their parents. He says the hard-working, stable kids from the country give them the least trouble. They have worked hard all their lives on the very farms and ranches that feed well over half the world, and they come to school more mature than their city cousins, and ready to learn.

How do they get to be so productive and responsible? Let us count the ways.

They often cut hay for long hours in the night. And why would they do that? Because Americans, and much of the rest of the world, need the food provided by the animals that eat that hay, and those farm boys and girls run the $50- to $100-thousand equipment that prepares it. Handling that kind of equipment makes a young adult responsible. It is massive and must be managed with care.

American farm products are desperately needed to keeping millions from dying of starvation in countries devastated by drought and war. Much of that food comes from the rural West, and much more of it is produced on the abundant, nutritious hay we grow out here. And, yes, it is grown on fields with sprinkler systems that go around in circles, growing hay, rather than filling swimming pools or servicing car washes.

How can we forget the milking done by dairy farmers? It has to be done twice a day, everyday. Do farmers work that hard because they love to get heatstroke in the summer, frostbite in the winter, and wall-to-wall bruises (administered by the newly-freshened milkers)? No. They do it because, contrary to the Rothman-like babblings of the PETA people, beer is not better for humans than milk.

Most western farmers and ranchers live where the air is very clean, whereas, the professor inhales a great deal of toxic air pollution.

These young adults, Professor Rothman, are the most valuable product of America’s rural West. They probably don’t tell you that they look on you as a "nutty professor," but chances are, they call you that behind your back.