This year's commemoration of the American worker fell a little flat, as it was met with a less than celebratory report—zero new jobs were added in the entire month of August—making this the least productive month in job creation in more than a year.

The lack of job creation is a direct result of employers questioning the possibility of a real recovery in the near future. Most seem to have abandoned the dream of expansion, and are focused now on sustainability.

So we weren't entirely surprised when we saw the recent survey-based index produced by DTN, reporting that agricultural businesses are less optimistic about their current and future economic situations than they were just six months ago.

"People see stagnation, and that's lowered their expectations for the future," Greg Hortsmeier, editor-in-chief of DTN, told Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg in a recent interview. "People don't see the opportunities to grow much further."

While this may come as a shock to those who have been hearing reports of record commodity prices, residents of rural America who have been experiencing drought, hail, and record rainfall for the better part of a year, can see why investing in a product that has no guarantee of being produced is a risk that not everyone is wiling to take.

And though many producers have come through the most recent growing season with not much more than dry soil and dead crop, input costs continue to rise. The combination of high energy and land prices, has contributed to a 43 percent increase in agricultural input cost over the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Because of this uncertainty in weather conditions, market prices, input costs, and the American economy, agribusinesses find themselves hesitant to expand, unsure of what they are going to encounter in coming months.

Uncertainty in business is only exacerbated by uncertainty in Congress, as Members continue to debate the future of essential policies and impending budget cuts.

And when the economy is uncertain about the intention of the government, wild market swings become the norm—something that the agricultural industry and national economy cannot afford right now.

And yet, despite all of this, rural America has managed to pull itself up from 9.8 percent unemployment in 2010 to 7.5 percent—much lower than the average rates in cities and suburbs throughout the country, according to the Global Works Foundation.

It's not the first time rural America has been set apart as the economic engine that could lead us out of recession.

Last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City placed U.S. agriculture at the forefront of the economic recovery. At the time, former chair of the House Agriculture Committee, Larry Combest, warned that Congress should be careful to maintain such a strong presence in rural America.

"With jobs, the economy, and deficits on the public's mind, Washington's objective on U.S. farm policy must be ensuring that this paper can be fully updated at year-end by striking "2010" and inserting '2011'," said Combest in an editorial piece released just weeks after the Fed's good news.

"To get there," he said, "U.S. farm policy needs to take a holistic approach that focuses on how Washington can create business certainty so producers can grow the economy and jobs while feeding, clothing, and fueling the country and much of the world."

Because with 21 million jobs rooted in American agriculture, it's a labor force that we can no longer afford to ignore.