Proclamation 5152

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

The United States produces nearly onetwelfth of the total output of the world's major agricultural commodities. This abundant production enables us to feed not only our own population, but tens of millions of other people throughout the world.

Our remarkable food and fiber production links together 23 million Americans who are involved in growing, processing, and marketing hundreds of United States agricultural commodities. Our farmers and ranchers produce a wide variety of meat, fruits, vegetables, food grains, flowers, dairy products, fibers, fish, and livestock. Maintaining such production requires natural resources, fertilizers, chemicals, credit, specialized equipment, processing, transporting, marketing, and State and national policies that strengthen the system. This vast integration of production and labor-an outgrowth of our free enterprise system-has transformed agriculture into the Nation's largest industry, with assets exceeding one trillion dollars.

To honor the working men and women of agriculture in America and to achieve a greater understanding of the stake each American has in maintaining the strength of the Nation's most basic industry, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 311 (Public Law 98-206), has authorized and requested the President to proclaim March 20, 1984, as "National Agriculture Day."

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim March 20, 1984, as National Agriculture Day, and I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 13th day of Feb., in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eightyfour, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:55 a.m., February 14, 1984]