Included in this edition of The Tidewater News is our annual “Celebrating Agriculture in Western Tidewater” insert, intended to coincide with Virginia Agriculture Week (March 18-24) and National Agriculture Day (March 20.) This special section and these state and national days of recognition serve to remind us all of just how important farming remains in our society.

True, we are no longer the agrarian society we once were, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the food we buy in grocery stores, and the clothes we wear, didn’t originate in those stores or materialize out of thin air. They came from crops in the ground.

Therefore, we offer our sincere thanks to those who choose the time-honored and at times risky profession of farming.