Proclamation 6624

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

The efficiency with which a nation produces and distributes its agricultural products largely determines the vitality, health, well-being, and economic strength of that nation. One of our Nation's great strengths is the tremendous productivity of its agricultural sector. The food and fiber that grow on our country's farms feed us, sustain us, and allow our Nation to thrive.

More than 20 million Americans—from farms to cities—are engaged in producing, processing, and marketing our agricultural supplies. They are a highly efficient team made up of farm families, people in rural communities, agribusiness industries, scientists, and retail distributors. This farm-city team is the most productive and effective in the world, demonstrating the strength and interdependence of our farms, rural areas, and cities in our economic system.

This remarkable farm-city system provides our people with produce for the smallest portion of consumers' average disposable income of any Nation. As consumers, we can use the remaining, much larger portion of our incomes for other goods, services, education, recreation, and comforts. This adds greatly to our choices in life and to our well-being, making us a more diversified, well-served people.

In addition, this farm-city team produces enough food in surplus of our own needs to enable the United States to be the breadbasket of the world, exporting more agricultural products than any other country. Each $1 billion of farm exports provides an additional $1.4 billion of off-farm economic activity and provides jobs for about 22,000 people on farms and in small towns and cities. Our highly competitive agricultural exports also provide the largest positive balance of trade of any U.S. industry. This, too, adds to our opportunities, our well-being, and the vitality of our economy.

Our agricultural team's unmatched productivity also makes it possible for the United States to carry out its international role as a world leader. As a strong, concerned Nation, with abundant agricultural reserves, the United States is the world's No. I donor of food aid in response to the needs of distressed people in other nations.

We all are indebted to the performance of the United States agricultural team. Each year since 1956, the Nation has set aside the week ending on Thanksgiving Day as "National Farm-City Week" to pay tribute to the people who put food on our tables and to give prayerful thanks for our individual blessings and the blessings of the United States of America.

Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, 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 19–25, 1903, as National Farm-City Week. I encourage all Americans, in rural and urban communities alike, to join in recognizing the accomplishments of our farmers and all those hardworking individuals who cooperate in producing the abundance of agricultural goods that strengthen and enrich the United States.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and eighteenth.

William J. Clinton