I'd say your Farm Bureau friends took great liberty with Webster's words. He actually said this:
"When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."
So Daniel Webster was speaking of farmers as the pioneers of the nation, rather than a bellwether of society or the economy. Taken the context of the time, this makes sense: The nation was starting a huge westward expansion. As soon as farms were established, towns, roads, schools, government, etc. followed.
Now, to answer your question, which really has nothing to do with Webster, agriculture is certainly not the economic force it once was. We have become an urban society, and our economy has shifted. First to manufacturing, then to the financial sector. Now, with the collapse of both the manufacturing and finance sectors of the economy, agriculture may very well rise again to revitalize the US economy. Certainly agriculture accounts for a large portion of our exports, even though (I think) we are no longer a net exporter of agricultural products.
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Today's Featured Article - Harvestin Hay: The Early Years (Part 2) - by Pat Browning. The summer of 1950 was the start of a new era in farming for our family. I was thirteen, and Kathy (my oldest sister) was seven. At this age, I believed tractor farming was the only way, hot stuff -- and given a chance I probably would have used the tractor, Dad's first, a 1936 Model "A" John Deere, to go bring in the cows! And I think Dad was ready for some automation too. And so it was that we acquired a good, used J. I. Case, wire tie hay baler. In addition to a person to drive th
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