By Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau
The old proverb “society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit,” recognizes the small contributions of past generations in forming the outline of the world we live in today and that shapes all of us.
Four individuals — Jennifer Mathes, Mona Owens, Pam Dougan and Ron Betzen — received recognition for their roles in creating a lot of shade over the past three decades by helping to create a five-county Earth Day program in Parsons.
When the local community Earth Day event was discontinued, the Young Farmers and Ranchers of Labette County, led by Mathes, decided to keep the event going with a focus on agriculture and conservation. Her original purpose was to promote agriculture, educate children that today’s agriculture is environmentally friendly and to educate teachers and provide them with curriculum ideas to use throughout the year.
The event has mostly dodged serious spring weather with only one rain out. A tornado tore through Parsons only hours after students marked Earth Day in 2000. The event also wasn’t held in 2020 and was threatened again in 2021 until volunteers created a virtual option dubbed “Agriculture 4 All” that met the goals of the original mission and is still available to view on YouTube.
Starting with the motto, “In agriculture, every day is Earth Day,” the group hosted more than 1,000 attendees of all grade levels in the inaugural year, and the young farmers group continued hosting the event until the turn of the century.
That’s when Farm Bureaus from Crawford, Montgomery, Neosho and Wilson counties joined the effort to provide area schools with a day of ag-centered lessons and manage the army of volunteers necessary to host stations featuring livestock, crops and conservation demonstrations.
Eventually the Earth Day event was pared back to fourth graders to better manage logistics, and nearly 600 attended the most recent event on April 16. The event also included more than 150 area FFA students who volunteered to run stations, serve lunch and help manage 600 fourth graders. Or at least attempt to manage them after they ate dessert.
The four honorees were recognized for their contributions over the previous 30 years. Mathes was honored for her vision to reimagine and continue an event that others didn’t see value in. Dougan and Owens, Farm Bureau coordinators representing Neosho and Labette counties, respectively, poured hours of their time into planning and coordinating the event over the years. Betzen, formerly a district administrator for Kansas Farm Bureau, helped connect county Farm Bureaus and provided plenty of behind-the-scenes support.
In addition to teaching students about agriculture, conservation and environmental stewardship, the Earth Day event also sent every attendee home with one other thing: a sapling. Most often the saplings were eastern redbuds, which are generally showing off their brilliant pink petals this time of year.
Fittingly, the four people honored for the 30th anniversary of the five-county Earth Day will have a redbud dedicated in their honor in the park that’s served as the host site. Hopefully someday they get the chance to enjoy its shade where they can consider the thousands of other trees that were planted because of the event.
Shade is a great benefit from past plantings, but a better marker of a society’s greatness is an ability to inspire the next generation and have them know that for farmers and ranchers, every day is Earth Day.
“Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.
