I am going on a rant, and yes this is a warning. This past weekend was the fateful day that we spring our clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Saving Time. Let me be clear and not mince any words here, I really dislike the time change and, I have yet to find anyone who really likes it. Over and over, I hear it is those of us in agricultural who benefit from the time change. I find that to be a categorical myth and untruth.

To say that we benefit from moving the clock up one hour is ludicrous.

This time change is for the birds, and I am coming out against it. Only someone not connected to agriculture could think moving the clock forward an hour and making sunset an hour later that it would increase our time in the field. We all know the reality is that we work until the job is done whether it is daylight or dark. Farmers and ranchers do not work by the clock.

What it does mean is we will be heading out into the dark in the morning to do the chores we did in the daylight just a day earlier. I often wonder how confused our animals must be when we show up an hour earlier suddenly for no apparent reason. I guess they probably like it better in the fall when breakfast arrives an hour later. I hate to tell the person or probably the committee that dreamed Daylight Saving Time up, but there are only so many hours of daylight and it does not matter what a clock says.

I will admit that I dislike the springtime change because it means I lose an hour of sleep, but I find the fall time change nearly as disruptive to my internal clock. I suspect most of us are up way before daylight either before or after the change, and the clock means little to us. In fact, I’d argue moving the clock forward and hour makes life more difficult. It suddenly means that instead of it getting dark at 6 p.m. it is now dark at 7 p.m., and it is awfully hard to shut down and go to a meeting when it is still light outside.

I would also propose we missed the perfect opportunity to get rid of the time change this past year. With the pandemic and all its disruptions to our lives, what would one more matter. We could have done away with the time changes and no one would have noticed because none of us had anywhere to go. At least something positive would have come out of the pandemic. So never mind me, I will be the one out in the dark stumbling my way through chores.

“Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.