MADISON COUNTY FAIR: Family, Farm, Friends, Freedom, and Future Generations

VISION

Whereas family farms forged our country and our county, and as agriculture is still Missouri’s top industry, the Madison County Fair serves as an important catalyst in uniting our community to honor and preserve our county’s family farming heritage.  

Madison County Fair promotes the importance of family farming. 

The Madison County Fair provides a family friendly setting for our county’s youth to learn from other farmers, participate in competitions, and receive recognition for their accomplishments. 

The Madison County Fair inspires generations of our children’s children with an honorable profession, an important purpose, a wonderful lifestyle, and a hope for the future. 

MISSION 

The Madison County Fair partners with our community to honor, preserve, and promote our county’s strong family farming heritage, traditions, and culture. 

The Madison County Fair supports, cultivates, and strengthens families, farmers, future farmers, community, and the county’s economy through educational opportunities, exhibits, and showcasing of livestock and agricultural products.  

The Madison County Fair provides a setting for our farmers to engage our community with a deeper understanding and appreciation of farming and the vastly important role family farms serve in our daily lives and in our county’s, state’s, and country’s economy at large.   

CORE VALUES  

• Family farming is the cornerstone of our state’s economy, our county’s economy, and our Fair. 

• Our Fair partners with our community to honor, preserve, and promote our county’s family farming heritage and traditions. 

• Our Fair is committed to fostering pride for our county’s heritage. 

• Our Fair is committed to promoting our county’s family farms and our community’s businesses that support our farmers. 

• Our Fair is committed to promoting excellence in farming through agricultural education and showcasing of our county’s products. 

• Our Fair is committed to promoting increased growth in our farming community. 

• Our Fair is committed to investing in our county’s youth to develop, encourage, and support future farmers.  

• Our Fair is committed to providing opportunities for our community to participate in family friendly commerce, competition, and fun activities. 

• Our Fair is committed to building wonderful family memories and strong traditions for future generations.   

• Our Fair members are committed to serving and supporting our community in a respectful, considerate, and kind manner. 

• Our Fair members expect the same courteous behavior from all our volunteers, educators, performers, participants, and attendees.

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization. -Daniel Webster

Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man.–George Washington

Farming is a profession of hope-Brain Brett 

Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health.-Paul Chatfield

For all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture.–Marcus Tullius Cicero 

Agriculture for an honorable and high-minded man, is the best of all occupation or arts by which men procure the means of living.–Xenophon

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.-Thomas Jefferson

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.-Samuel Johnson 

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life. -Wendall Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture 

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land’s inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve the soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery. -Wendall, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. They like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. They love…to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss. –Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food