Proclamation 5579

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

American agriculture is the most productive in the world. Our Nation's consumers have the broadest selection of nutritious and healthful food in the world, and we purchase our food for only around 15 percent of after-tax income. Because we are most grateful for this abundance and we share it gladly with other lands, we lead in providing food aid programs around the world. In addition, we are a huge commercial exporter and dependable supplier of food and fiber.

Our Nation and the world owe many thanks for this bounty to American farmers, whose dedication, enterprise, hard work, and good management are models of modern productivity. One American farm worker supplies food and fiber for 75 people, 60 here in the United States and 15 overseas.

We also owe thanks to our farmers' partners in our agricultural system-the rural townspeople and the city workers who maintain a pipeline of production supplies to farms. We are grateful as well to the truckers, shippers, processors, warehousers, retailers, and others in our chain of marketing distributors.

Each year at Thanksgiving time, our Nation pauses for Farm-City Week activities to recognize the enterprise that makes this bountiful agricultural harvest possible through the blessings of our Creator.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of November 21 through November 27, 1986, as National Farm-City Week. I call upon all Americans, in rural areas and in cities alike, to join in recognizing the accomplishments of our productive farmers and of our urban residents cooperating to create abundance, wealth, and strength for the Nation.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-sixth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eleventh.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:32 a.m., November 28, 1986]