recognition you have given me. I shall cherish this event as one of the
fondest remembrances of my last year in the Office of Governor of
Maryland. I hope that in some small way I am deserving of the
tribute that has been paid to me here. Although not a farmer myself,
my background, in Somerset County, Maryland, is rural, and I
believe I have an understanding of the farmer and his problems.

Our State — Maryland — has achieved no renown beyond its
borders as agricultural; our image abroad is not that of an agricultural
community. Our friends in other parts of the country never think
of us as a wheat state, a corn state, a hog state, a cattle state, or even
a poultry state. And yet, as we know, agriculture has been from the
beginning, is now and from every indication will continue to be in
the future, the bone of sinew of our Maryland economy. It is not an
accident that the Great Seal of Maryland bears the figures of a fisher-
man and a farmer. And these symbols are as appropriate today as
they were when they were devised centuries ago. For the cultivation
of the soil has been, from the very beginning, a basic part of Mary-
land life.

Maryland, as I have suggested, does not vie with many other
states in the total production of its farms, but it does rank high in
production per farm and production per acre. And this, it seems to
me, is very important. Our farmers, for the most part, are progres-
sive and prosperous. Our farms are well-tended, well-kept and scienti-
fically operated. And farming remains a vital part of our economy.
To illustrate that point, in 1965 the gross cash sales from farms in
Maryland amounted to $321 million.

We take great pride in Maryland in the great social, geographical
and economic diversity of our State. We have farms, villages, towns
and big cities. We have towering mountains, rolling hills, plains and
the ocean. Our transportation system — water, land and air, — is
unexcelled anywhere. Something vital would be missing from this
whole if we did not have our farms and our agricultural enterprises.

The Creator smiled upon our lovely land in many ways; endowing
it especially with gifts of geography. It has been called a land of
pleasant living, and verily it is that; but it is also a land of abundant
living. History and geography have combined to bring this about.
Our agriculture has prospered because we have a fertile soil, and
equable climate, adequate water resources, proximity to markets, a
good transportation system. And more important than this, we have
men and women with the intelligence, the vision and the industry
to us these resources to supply their wants — for the betterment of

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