Conventional wisdom says agriculture is a dying industry in Tooele County. Fields and range lands are being gobbled up by new homes, residents lead increasingly urbanized lives, and behind every farmer, the joke goes, is a wife with a job in town.

But in a three-part series on agriculture in the county that concluded last week, Transcript-Bulletin Community News Editor Sarah Miley showed why it might be time to rethink some of our notions of agriculture. First off, rumors of the industry’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Livestock production over the past five years has been higher than at any time in the last three decades. Two years ago, total agricultural receipts totaled $27.9 million — a 67 percent increase just since 2001.

Second, the industry produces political leaders as readily as it produces crops and beef. In fact, two sitting county commissioners, plus two state representatives and one state senator representing the county, have strong ties to the ag industry. And that doesn’t include the influence of several past county leaders, many of whom came out of ag backgrounds. In addition, farmers and ranchers constitute a strong political bloc that wields power through the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, which is headed by Stockton resident and past Tooele County Commissioner Leland Hogan.

Finally, agriculture remains deeply ingrained in the soul of the county. Many residents here have ancestral ties to the industry and a deep respect for ranching and farming families. Many newcomers love the rural feel of a place with open fields and grazing cattle, and they’re willing to wait behind a creeping tractor on the highway for the reminder it offers that life can be lived at a slower pace. Also, as the third part of our series showed, some people who grew up on farms are coming back to them as adults, looking to return to a way of life that connects them to the land — no matter the hardships or hard work involved.

A looming worldwide food crisis has many national experts predicting a paradigm shift in agriculture. Some say large, single-crop farms will break down into smaller, more diversified farm-ranches, and that an aging population of U.S. farmers will be replaced by younger, tech-savvy, eco-minded ag entrepreneurs. These next-generation farmers are being lured into the industry not by family ties but by the profits to be made in an arena where demand is outstripping supply on a global scale, and food safety has become a matter of national security.

The news that agriculture is about to become hip again would probably give a chuckle to farmers and ranchers across the county. After all, few of them got into the business to get rich. Still, they might be happy to know long-term trends are moving in their favor, ensuring that their way of life will be around for a long time to come.