Please take note, all of you out there in the Silicon Valley, in the Big Apple, along the Strip in Las Vegas and on the Microsoft campus in Redmond. Yakima Valley is No. 1, and you're not.

A recent survey by Manpower Inc., a Milwaukee-based firm that provides employee recruitment and consulting services, has officially declared the Yakima metropolitan area the best prospect in the nation for employment in the second quarter. The Yakima Valley's closest competition? Our neighbors to the south in the Tri-Cities.

The survey was no light undertaking. It covered 200 metropolitan statistical areas across the country and measured 31,800 companies to see if they were adding employees or laying them off. The projected hiring rate dipped to its lowest mark ever since the surveying began in 1962.

But here in the Yakima Valley, the employment picture is much brighter.

The reason for this has to do with agriculture and a record apple crop that local fruit-packing companies, which pump out a weekly payroll of $10 million, are now trying to market.

Too often, the Yakima Valley is dismissed as just a farming community by those with urban ZIP codes. They have little appreciation for the bounty that this area produces.

The statistics bear witness. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, Yakima County in 2007 was 12th in the nation for total value of ag products sold ($1.2 billion) and was No. 1 in the nation with respect to acreage for apples (54,676).

It was also tops in the state for sales of livestock and poultry, milk and dairy products, and sheep and goat products.

While technology may be the economic driver of California's Silicon Valley, agriculture has been ours and will be for years to come. As we have seen in past recessions, agriculture has kept the Yakima Valley's economy on a relatively even keel, without huge rises or precipitous drops.

That's why it was reassuring to see the county at the top of the heap in a national survey. Too often, we are near the bottom.

So when spring arrives -- and it will, we promise -- and fruit trees blossom, pause for a moment to take in the scenery. This is one of the reasons why we are No. 1. Enjoy nature's bounty. Our nation certainly does.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Barbara Serrano, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.