Field work on a farm near Leesburg.

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — Admittedly, numbers can sometimes be manipulated or arranged in such a way as to be misleading. But when it comes to the number of people directly engaged in farming, the story told is one of far fewer people involved in agriculture than a couple of generations ago.

According to Kassi Rowland, assistant of office operations at Tom Farms, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture. In the 2012 Census, there were 3.2 million farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers and approximately 757.900 agricultural workers were legally employed nationwide.

Farmland has been sold off and developed in huge chunks. Farms have tended to become larger operations and even a certain percentage of those who still farm only do it part-time or as a hobby while they work at other full-time jobs off the farm.

As a result of these trends, fewer people are growing up on farms. At many schools, though there are exceptions, the majority of students in FFA have never lived on a farm. Thirty or 40 years ago, the reverse was likely true.

Misunderstandings and controversies can be the result when today’s farming practices are not clearly understood. Some in the farming community have attempted to educate the public through community outreach or simply personal, one-on-one contact with a farmer.

“Knowing far fewer folks are growing up on farms is a little scary, but also reality,” Rowland commented. “Most people really don’t understand where their food is coming from,” and a great challenge for the farming community is the amount of misinformation found online. “With a click of the button everyone reading one person’s blog thinks it is correct,” she added.

As an example, she noted food labeling can be misleading and cited an example of putting “non gluten” on a label when the particular food doesn’t even have glutens in it to begin with.

It is the information age and, said Jacob Riley, agriculture, food and natural resources instructor, as well as FFA advisor at the Warsaw Area Career Center, everyone is bombarded with information from many angles every single day. “It can be difficult to decipher what is important or what may not be important at the time, what is true or what may be stretched from the truth,” he said.

Riley noted he believes today’s farming practices are safer, more environmentally friendly and produce more commodities than in the past, yet background knowledge about how animals are taken care of or how crops are grown is “relegated to stories told of distant memories.”

That’s not to say concerns about farming practices are never legitimate, but both Rowland and Riley believe dealing with the public head-on is the best way to clarify modern farming practices.

“The best way to find out about agricultural practices is to ask questions — ask producers, ask processors, ask those with direct knowledge of the methods,” Riley said. Rowland said Tom Farms uses social media as an informative tool and will respond to questions.

“For example, we may post about our seed corn practices, which many folks have no idea what seed corn even is,” she said. She noted farmers are getting better about sharing their stories and how food ends up on the table, but “there are a lot more people (not in farming) than there are farmers.”

She encourages visits to farms of all types and added when someone on the management team at Tom Farms is asked to speak, they usually do so. Riley noted there is Kosciusko County Ag Awareness Day, Taste of Ag, the 4-H Fair, tours of farms and many agri-tourism sites.

“Sometimes the best interactions are those that occur with neighbors,” he said. “Just talking with producers and asking questions — getting information directly from the source — leads to the most impactful educational opportunities.”

Josh Ramer (on the trailer) and Kris Tom of Tom Farms are doing some farm field work. This is the time of the year when spring planting of farm crops is occurring.