Former television news anchor Wes Sarginson has an appreciation for farmers.

"I come from a farm family in Southern Illinois," said Sarginson, who was the keynote speaker for the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce annual Farm-City Week breakfast Thursday.

When Sarginson was working in Detroit, he bought a farm in Alabama where he had 250 head of cattle.

"The partners in this farm were an accountant from Philadelphia, a CIA agent from Washington, D.C., a lawyer from Detroit, a cop from Montgomery, Ala., and me," he said.

The partners were required to work two weeks a year, bailing hay and rounding up cattle.

"We had a great time," he said. "These people got to experience something they had never seen in their lives."

He said they kept the herd for about 10 years.

Sarginson encouraged the farmers in the room to use the media to tell their story, especially when times were tough. He said there were only a few reporters around who really understand the plight of farmers.

The former anchorman, who worked for WXIA and WSB-TV in Atlanta, recently has completed a documentary about a B-17 bomber that retraced the World War II route across the Arctic Circle from the U.S. to England. The program will air in the future on PBS.

The annual breakfast is to honor those who work in agriculture for their importance to city dwellers.

In the 2002 Census of Agriculture, Hall County had agricultural sales of $170.3 million, which was 3.5 percent of the state’s total agricultural receipts. The data from the 2007 census is not yet available.