I have been a “G-Man” practically my whole life.  I actually became a G-Man at the age of six when I enrolled in the Georgetown Exempted Village School system.  Anyone who attended Georgetown Schools was known as a G-Man.  Our school colors were gold and black and we where proud to be Georgetown G-Men.  In 1966, I graduated and headed south and became a Kentucky Wildcat which is a pretty good thing to be during basketball season.

After four years at Kentucky I headed back north and resumed being a G-Man by taking a job as a County Extension Agent in Clark County, Ohio.  Believe it or not, I was probably thirty before I discovered what a G-Man was.  For those of you who do not know, a G-Man is a government man.  Thus, 83 per cent of my life has been spent as a G-Man.  This brings me to the topic today, government regulations in agriculture.

Growing up in Brown County years ago, I remember very little when it comes to government regulation.  Everyone in the rural area burned their trash and had there own landfill.  Even in town we raked leaved to the curb, played in them, and set them on fire.  It was a fall ritual we looked forward to.  Spreading manure was what everyone on the farm did and the smell was “natural” not a federal offense. 

As a 4-H and FFA member, I can only remember government regulation in two areas:  milk and tobacco.  I remember milking cows in the barn lot, pouring the milk in cans and setting them out for pickup.  When government regulation came requiring more sanitary milking facilities, the cows went to town and were replaced with beef cows.

Tobacco was “king” in Brown County.  Even the Georgetown FFA had a tobacco allotment.  This was how we raised money for the chapter instead of selling fruit.  Based on farm history, one could grow so many acres of tobacco.  The government would measure it every year, making sure you did not exceed your allotment which could be as small as one-half acre.  When government regulates, there are those who have to try to cheat the system.  In the hills it was easy to “hide” some tobacco plants.  However, the government soon rented airplanes to find these illegal tobacco patches much like they do today for marijuana.

Today, government regulation has grown faster than the USA’s deficit.  How would you like to be an independent business person and have everyone, such as your neighbor and people across the state of Ohio, telling you how to run you business?  Meet the American Farmer, specifically, the Ohio Farmer, who encounters this intrusion everyday in his running of the farm business.

I can remember my Dad getting mad at FTD because they tried to tell him how to arrange is front window of his flower shop.  It wasn’t long before he fired them and became associated with a rival group call Florifax.

U.S. farmers don’t have the luxury of firing the government so they are saddled with many burdens that causes them to be less competitive in world markets.  Government regulation does affect competitiveness.

In the past year there have been many articles on the U.S. trade imbalance.  Record deficits in trade can be traced in part, to our declining exports in steel, textiles (which are almost non-existent today) and agriculture.  For the first time I can ever remember, the U.S. imported more food than it exported last January.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, one in three Americans lived on a farm; today, less than two in 100 live on a farm.  When our farm sons decided they wanted non-farm jobs, we encouraged them to be a vet or run a farm cooperative.  Today, we advise them to become a lawyer specializing in agricultural law because this is where there will be a lot of opportunity for work in the future.

Ohio State University Extension, Farm Service Agency, and Farm Bureau spend a majority of their time today updating farmers on changing government regulations.  If a farmer hires one person for one hour during the year, he is required to display three posters concerning employment.  Application of manure is now regulated on large livestock farms and soon to be on smaller ones.

The big news today is EPA’s Air Quality Compliance with animal feeding operations, dikes that need to be built for fertilizer, and herbicide and fuel storage on the farm.  Animal identification is coming.  The RFID reader is over $1000.00 each for those who wish to read the required tags.  And we wonder why Smithfield is building all their new swine production units in Brazil.

Thanks in large part to reports by the media and attacks by large farm opponents, the public in many cases associates modern agriculture with animal welfare, odor and environmental concerns.

The world is run by those who show up.  Farmers can no longer be silent.  We need to tell the true story that farmers are good stewards of the land.  Congratulations to Gain and Grain Farm (Richard Flax) for winning the Ohio Environmental Stewardship Award this year.

We need to tell our story or U.S. agriculture will suffer the same fate as steel and textiles.  My reign as a G-Man is quickly drawing to a close.  I hope U.S. agriculture is not right behind me.

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Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Admin. and Director, OSU Extension 
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