Those who toil to fill our breadbaskets deserve our gratitude

Let's come down to earth for a moment and sink our feet into the soil. And while we're at it, let's raise a toast to the "salt of the earth".

Many of us spend a fair amount of time washing the soil from our hands, from our faces, from our clothes.

But those who till the land in China and elsewhere, the farmers we so often neglect, wear soil much of the time, along with such labels as "common farmer" or, more condescendingly, "laborer", as if toil and sweat are to be disdained.