I stumbled on something eye-opening recently while surfing the Internet for ways to address my toddler's weighty question: "Daddy, why are those people sleeping on the street?"

His question came while we were driving in DC after a snowstorm, and it presented a unique opportunity to teach a three-year-old about philanthropy and compassion (a lesson that I honestly needed a refresher on after spending years trying not to make eye contact with the homeless faces asking me for help each day).

Online was a great lesson plan prepared by a Detroit public school teacher for kindergarteners.

According to her instructions, children first should be taught the difference between wants and needs.

"[W]ants, such as a doll or stuffed animal might make [kids] feel happier and safer as they go to bed, but they could stay alive without it, and...a car would make life easier for the family to go places, but they could walk instead," the teacher wrote.

In fact, the teacher identified just four basic needs—food, clothes, water, and shelter.

These are the same basic necessities we all learned about in grade school, yet some of us have clearly forgotten the lesson. Especially in DC, where politicians squabble about which "wants" deserve the most federal funding, while looking at "needs" for budget offsets.

It's amazing to think that farmers and ranchers are directly responsible for producing half of our basic necessities. They literally put food on our tables and clothes on our backs. Expand your definition of agriculture to include tree farmers, and you could say they put roofs over our heads, too.

And when you think that they underpin 21 million jobs in this country, farmers and ranchers play a pretty big role in most of us being able to afford our wants-sorry guys, but the 50-inch plasma playing the Final Four in high-def and surround sound falls into that category.

Yet the policies that our farmers and ranchers depend on represent just one-quarter of one percent of federal spending. Put another way, half of what we need to stay alive is but a blip on Uncle Sam's balance sheet.

Last year when the government began looking for programs to sacrifice in the name of deficit reduction, farm policy was first on the list and among the only places to take a hit. This year, some have suggested another trip to rural America to look for even more funding.

Maybe farmers should ask this Detroit teacher to testify at the next 2012 farm bill hearing. It might be a good reminder to some legislators of what we can do without and what we can't.

As for my son, he got the gist and even pitched in as my family collected clothes to donate to the Salvation Army.

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About the author: Phillip Hayes is communications director for the American Sugar Alliance and is a regular content provider to The Hand That Feeds U.S.