I recently returned from a trek across China -- the cradle of Eastern civilization; the birthplace of printing, munitions, and many of the agricultural practices today responsible for efficiently feeding most of the world. China has been a center of Confucianist, Buddhist, and Communist thought, and is in this new millennium a heady blend of ancient traditions and burgeoning high-tech commerce.

I viewed a 2,000-year-old Great Wall erected to protect China from Mongol attack and a 500-year-old Forbidden City within which emperors and concubines once dwelt. I witnessed superskyscrapers and communications towers that have transformed Shanghai into a marketplace for the globe, a massive dam project that will bring electrical power and new transportation capabilities to inland China, and pioneering work in agricultural production.

If I had to crystallize my 10-day experience in this wonderful country into a single thought, it would be this (and listen carefully): Please chop the head off my dinner, please.

The fish was delicious, don't get me wrong, but I didn't like the way it was gaping at me. Not that one-eyed, sideways, faintly astonished trout almondine stare -- the full-on, open-mouthed guilt glare that only a carp who has met an untimely, premeditated death can deliver. I can't stand it when the victims of my gluttony insist on rubbing it in.

I guess the point is, although I write for a weekly farm publication, I am somewhat detached from land and the food it produces. I cover federal agricultural policy, and if you ask me where we get milk from, I'm likely to tell you it the result of a domestic dairy support program that regulates regional supply and demand, combined with the market-leveling effects of the Milwaukee-Wisconsin fluid milk price. And here, you thought it came from squeezing the nether regions of a ripe cow. Hee hee.

So I have taken it upon myself to pay tribute to the farmer, who supplies us with our grain, meat, produce, and milk. And who are kind enough to remove the cranium from my steak before they dish it up. Urp.

Y'all download farm.zip, hear?