LE††UCE PREY
“On behalf of farmers and ranchers in the state of Utah and the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, we respectively invite you to join us in prayer and fasting this Sunday so that we might have the necessary moisture to take care of our animals and nurture the crops that we’ve been given stewardship over,” Ron Gibson said. “It has been said that ‘eating is an agricultural act.’ Whether you are directly or indirectly involved in agriculture, we invite all to join us in prayer and fasting.”
Gibson received a call from Erin Sorensen (the State Young Farmers & Ranchers committee chair) and said that they had just had a meeting and they were very concerned about the drought. She said they wanted to have a day of prayer and fasting on Sunday to pray for moisture.
“As I thought about it, I realized that I had been taught by the faith of our young leaders in agriculture,” he said. “As fasting and prayer is a tenant of many religions around the world, it does not matter what religion you are, or even where or if you go to church, but the reality is that when we are in those desperate moments in our lives, sometimes our Father in Heaven is the only one that can help us.”
“We’re trying to figure out this situation,” said Gibson. “We’re in a tough spot — agriculture needs water to grow food and we just don’t have the water this year.”
Gibson and other farmers have put their faith in God to help. He hopes that along with a diligence to greater conservation this year, Utah will join them.
“I invite you to pray with all the farmers and ranchers in the state that we might have a way to find a solution,” said Gibson.
Statewide, reservoirs measure roughly 15% lower than usual, and forecasters predict some of our basins will receive just 25% of what they normally do in any given year.
“We’re at the point where we just haven’t seen the state looking this dry over the last 30 years,” Utah Snow Survey Supervisor Jordan Clayton said.
“I really believe that this solution comes from one person and one person only,” said Ron Gibson, a sixth-generation farmer who also serves as the president of the Utah Farm Bureau. “And that’s our Father in Heaven.”
In 2011, then governor Texas Rick Perry signed a proclamation asking Texans to pray for rain. Four years later, it finally came.
