Proclamation 5899—National Farm-City Week, 1988

Communication systems are the essential circuitry of democracy, the lifelines of information and ideas that provide the motive power for economic growth, social development, and personal enrichment. Throughout our history as a Nation of great size and dynamic opportunities, America has relied on the creation and extension of new lines of communication as a primary means of achieving greater cohesion and more rapid transfer of knowledge and services.

During National Farm-City Week, we pause to recognize formally this aspect of our heritage and to rededicate ourselves to the goal of open and effective communication between rural and urban people, groups, and institutions. The pace of change in this regard has been truly extraordinary over the past century—with, for example, rural free delivery, the telephone, radio, and television. From the vantage point of the late 20th century, it may be hard for us to imagine how significant these and other developments in urban-rural communication actually were.

Advances in communication are even more vital today, when an average of 112 people rely on a single American farmer for their supply of food and fiber and agriculture is the focus of increasing international commerce and competition. The range of agricultural issues has grown, too, to include public concern over the environment, recreational areas, water, wildlife, food safety and nutrition, and, of course, the productivity and profitability of farming itself. Fortunately, new means of communication are facilitating the rapid transfer of the ever more complex data needed to support our Nation's thriving mix of urban and rural activity. From satellites to on-line communications, from specialized newsletters to general trade publications, America's citydwellers and farm families have an array of impressive new tools for sharing the fruits of their intelligence and their labor in the pursuit of a better life for all.

For the past 34 years, the theme of urban-rural dialogue and communication has been a regular part of our national celebration of Thanksgiving Week. Let us pause again this year to acknowledge our gratitude for the bounty of energy and invention God has bestowed upon our land.

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 18-24, 1988, as National Farm-City Week. I call upon all Americans to join in recognizing the importance of communication between rural and urban areas and in acclaiming the collaborative accomplishments of our productive farmers and urban residents.

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

RONALD REAGAN