To all my critics, I have years of training in writing the English language. To both of my fans, English class was never my favorite. I remember my favorite lesson from my favorite English teacher (who will remain nameless to protect her identity). During a lesson on creative writing, she said, “When writing, avoid clichés … avoid them like the plague.”

There is nothing more cliché than using a dictionary definition, so … according to the Googles, a cliché is a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.

Clichés can be useful. Entertaining your friends and family with original material can be exhausting. Instead of reinventing the wheel, you use a cliché to avoid awkward silence. When it comes to clichés, my favorite are the agricultural ones.

Perhaps an example would be useful. “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” This cliché is a prophecy to keep one’s options open. We have chickens, and if I can find the egg basket, I put all my eggs in said basket. If I can’t find the egg basket, I will stow eggs in every pocket I have. That is a recipe for disaster … There’s no counting those crushed eggs before they hatch.

A cousin of this aphorism is the cliché, “You have too many irons in the fire.” I’ve participated in a few brandings, and I hate waiting for an iron to reheat because there are more calves than irons. I have never heard a buckaroo complain about too many irons in the fire. However, it is important that those irons in the fire make the same brand. Therein lies the solution to the problem of too many irons in the fire.

My favorite ag-related cliché is, “Make hay when the sun shines.” I use this phrase to encourage my children to complete a task when the opportunity is ripe. I also use this phrase to encourage my baler operator to plant his keister in the seat of a tractor when the weather is prime. Ag clichés have a poignant meaning both on the farm and in polite society.

Some agriculture clichés are so overused and lack originality that they get mixed up to meaningless. Have you heard someone say, “It’s a hard road to hoe?” Everyone reading this column knows that hoeing a row is common practice, but hoeing a road is someone who fell off the deep end. I found innumerable quotes expressing how hard it is to hoe a road. The quotes are mostly athletes and politicians … not exactly the literary geniuses of our era. The singer Elton John has a song titled “Ticking” that uses the idiomatic expression “hard road to hoe.” To his defense, he is from across the pond. To tell the truth, I’m not entirely sure what language they speak in England. Perhaps something was lost in translation.

The most overused agriculture cliché of late is, “As someone in agriculture, we need to advocate for agriculture.” For every problem farmers and ranchers encounter, the solution always seems to be, “We need to advocate for agriculture.” As someone in animal agriculture, between PETA, the Sierra Club and volatile calf prices, if we don’t advocate for ourselves, no one will hear our side of the debate.

Despite the importance of the premise, “advocating for agriculture” is an overused cliché. The problem with this cliché: No one knows specifically what advocating for agriculture really means.

To answer, allow me one more cliché, straight from the horse’s mouth. I was at a state fair in my youth and heard a city dweller complain, “I am sweating like a pig.” With my extensive mental library of useless mammalian facts, I informed her, “Pigs don’t sweat.” She looked at me askance. “They don’t have sweat glands,” I told her with the certitude of a know-it-all. “They pant and waller in the mud to cool off.”

You are probably thinking the same thing as the woman at the fair, “What a strange little boy.” But she also asked and had answered a long series of ag-based questions. A person from the city had a chance encounter with an advocate for agriculture.

We think that advocating for agriculture involves some grandiose effort. You need a following on the Twitters or to write a screenplay like Taylor Sheridan. Maybe even write a column for an ag-based periodical, but even with my column, there isn’t a mass distribution to the audience that buys ag products. Most of these venues are simply preaching to the choir.

Advocating for agriculture can be as simple as a conversation. Most people are curious and attentive to the interests of other human beings. They respond favorably to anyone describing their passionate pursuits. They don’t care about government regulation, high interest rates or wildly fluctuating commodity prices. They are interested in your story of growing their food. And if they care about your story, they will get as upset as you about the threats to agriculture.

Advocating for agriculture doesn’t need to be cliché. If we don’t tell our story, then dunderheads like Taylor Sheridan and Gus Brackett will tell our stories for us. And the most effective audience is one conversation at a time … and you can take that to the bank … until the cows come home.