Proclamation 4044—National Farm Safety Week, 1971

Primitive man's first discoveries about cultivating the land came by chance, and for thousands of years thereafter agriculture progressed only slowly out of the realm of guesswork. Even in the early days of this. Nation, when we were a people of farmers and planters, the process of coaxing life out of the earth remained far more an art than a science. But today American agriculture has become a fully realized technology largely subject to human planning and control—a bountiful producer of food, clothing, and the makings of the good life for America and the world.

Thus there is sharp irony in the fact that this great industry, so accomplished in the scientific nurture of plant and animal life, remains among the industries in which human life is most precarious and accident rates are highest. The farm and ranch environment abounds in potential hazards—powerful machinery, exposed working conditions, physically demanding jobs—but experience has shown that caution, common sense, and protective equipment can do much to counter them and keep accidents and injuries to a minimum. All who live and work on America's farms and ranches owe it to themselves, their families, and the nation that depends on them, to put safety first. Let us set the goal of eliminating chance from rural life just as we have learned to exclude it from agricultural production.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the week of July 25, 1971, as National Farm Safety Week. I urge farm families and all in the rural community to make every effort to reduce accidents occurring at work, home, in recreation and on the highway.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-fifth.

RICHARD NIXON