Gratitude is a severely under-rated emotion. When felt, it often isn’t expressed to its full potential. One of the benefits of living in America is that we have access to many things for which we should be thankful for…however, they’re often taken for granted. Food is one such thing.

If you’ve ever wondered how you’ll pay for your next meal, you can thank American agriculture for making it possible for you to eat. If you’ve ever had the option to pick the pricey niche option or the more cost-effective one, you can thank our agricultural system. You can thank farmers and ranchers all over the U.S. (and Canada, too!) for making choice and cost efficiency possible. I talked more in-depth about it in my “agriculture thankful” post on my friend Ryan Goodman’s blog, Agriculture Proud. This post, however, is about something beyond just me and my story about my agriculture appreciation.

It’s about gratitude. It’s about gratitude for everyone in the food industry. It’s fairly well-known that I’m a volunteer with the AgChat Foundation. And I’m proud to announce here that on Wednesday, November 24, we’ll be celebrating #foodthanks. For more information, check out the official #foodthanks website here. FoodThanks.com is meant to encourage gratitude towards everyone involved in the food production system. Whether it’s a niche market, local, nationwide, mass-production, or home-grown, someone somewhere had to work hard to supply you with food.

So, this Thanksgiving, remember how much work it takes to get that food from field to fork, from pasture to plate.

I’m going to show my #foodthanks. Are you?