Proclamation 5278—Women in Agriculture Week, 1984

Women have always played an equal role with men in the agriculture of the Nation. Early America was an agricultural society, and colonial women worked beside men to develop the new land. Together, they learned local agriculture from the Indians, erected log cabins, and cleared farmland. Pushing their clearings to the foothills of the Alleghenies, they passed through mountain gaps and crossed the prairies together in covered wagons.

Women were partners in American life from the founding of our first settlements. Men and women together in family enterprises began to process food, weave fabrics, and market food and fiber. As the settlements became towns and then cities, and as agricultural jobs became more specialized, women remained partners in the maturing of the agriculture of our Nation.

Today, agriculture employs 22 million people who work with food and fiber in growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, and retailing. Women are active in farm management, finances, and community life and in establishing agricultural policy. They are also active in all phases of agribusiness and in agricultural processing and marketing. It is appropriate, therefore, that we set aside a week to recognize the role of women in this most basic of all industries.

The Congress, by House Joint Resolution 554, has designated the week of November 11 through 17, 1984, as "Women in Agriculture Week" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of November 11 through November 17, 1984, as Women in Agriculture Week. I call on all Americans to participate in appropriate events to pay tribute to women in agriculture whose talents, hard work, and dedication significantly contribute to the production and marketing of the Nation's food supplies.

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

RONALD REAGAN