The Pike County Farm-City Committee has once again won first place with its booth entry at the Pike County Fair.

This year’s booth supports Alabama’s Farm-City theme, “Agriculture: 365 Sunrises and 7 Billion Mouths to Feed.”

Randy Hale, Pike County Farm-City Committee chair, said having a booth at the Pike County Fair is a great opportunity for the committee to put agriculture front and center during the autumn harvest time of year.

“We have a very dedicated committee with a lot of active and involved sub-committees,” Hale said. “June Flowers and Bobby Catrett led the group that set up the booth and had contributions of items from Josh Elliott, Jeff Knotts, Homer Homann, Leigh Anne Windham, Tammy Powell, Lauren Smith, Kathy Sauer and Pauline Catrett.

“I even put the cotton pickin’ sack that I had as a little boy in the exhibit. When we got all of our daddy’s cotton picked, he found somewhere else for us to pick. So, my sack’s had a lot of use.”

Hale said the Farm-City group chose to display food products grown in Pike County – green and dry peanuts, shelled corn and cob corn, cotton, poultry and beef, milk, pecans, honey, sugar cane, eggs and forest products.

“By decorating the booth with these items, people are reminded of farm life they once experienced or have been told about or read about,” Hale said. “In the United States today, farmers account for less than one percent of the population. That’s a little more than three million farmers all over the country working 365 days of the year to produce food and fiber and timber. With today’s production levels, just one farmer grows enough to feed 155 people.”

Hale said, around the time Farm-City was first established in 1955 one farmer could feed only 19 others.

“This tremendous increase in available food and fiber could not happen without the goods and services provided by the other 99 percent of the population,” he said.

“Farmers implementing the latest research and technology with their crops and animals have allowed the United States customers to benefit from one of the world’s safest and most affordable food stocks”

Hale said the community is encouraged to visit the Pike County Farm-City booth at the Pike County Fair today through Saturday and see how many of the farm-related items they can identify.

“We’ve got items that can easily be identified –cotton baskets, hole diggers, push plows and Mason jars,” Hale said.

“Then, we’ve got things that only us older folks know about – cloth fertilizer bags, chicken feeders, logging tongs and zinc foot tubs. The booth is really a walk back in time.”

Hale said the Farm-City’s award-winning booth is part of the committee’s Farm-City Week activities that will culminate with the annual awards and recognition banquet on Nov. 13 at Cattleman Park.

Tickets for the banquet that celebrates the partnership between the rural and urban communities in Pike County may be purchased at the Pike County Chamber of Commerce in downtown Troy or by calling 334-566-2294.