Indiana's Agiculture Policy - a response to a response

have spent some time trying to add the following to the comments at Great Lakes Small Business Blog but with no luck.

I thank you for your kind words regarding Trifles from Anderson. However, I would not have said that the article you cited was advocating government subsidies. It was meant to critique the current Indiana agricultural policy.

I would say that federal agricultural subsidies made two contributions. First, they reined in what had been one of the more radical segments of our citizens. Take a look at the Grangers and the Populists and you will see farmers. Now we have Republicans. The other accomplishment is the rise of the corporate farm.

Government is involved with agriculture and always will be. A dependable food source will always trump the pure, anarchic free market. That takes a bit of fun out of our lives but an unreliable food supply system is a recipe for disaster.

With that said, the current federal subsidies provide their own dangers. I cannot recall for sure but I am petty certain that I did not blog on a Washington Post article regarding milk subsidies. The article was pretty good description of the monopolist tendencies created by subsidies.

Indiana's government has decreed that CAFO's - actually hog feeder lots - will be the future of our state agricultural policy. Presumably now Purdue (our land grant university) will do all it can to pursue this policy. Our farmers and Purdue have a relationship for promoting our state's agriculture. And there we have government involvement again. I am far from keen on CAFO's. I see environmental damage and I see economic problems stemming from a monoculture. While they cannot be avoided, it should not come from starving the small farmers.

We could and should encourage value added products, better education about foreign markets for all our agricultural products. This requires a government/private partnership (especially the export side of things). But at the state level, the principal government influence on our farmers is Purdue. Information, training, research provided by Purdue may not save all family farms but it certainly cannot hurt very many. Combine what Purdue provides with the skill and knowledge of the farmer and I think we may have a better agricultural policy than what has been proposed so far.