Column: Relocating state ag department may actually hurt
Published 12:00 am Monday, March 4, 2002
Coming from a farm community in rural Minnesota, I can understand how talk of moving the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to greater Minnesota sounds good at first glance.
Monday, March 04, 2002
Coming from a farm community in rural Minnesota, I can understand how talk of moving the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to greater Minnesota sounds good at first glance. After all, what better agency to have in a rural area than the agriculture department? But when you take a closer look, there are many reasons why moving the agency out of St. Paul could easily hurt farmers more than it would help them.
First, there’s a real concern that moving the MDA out of St. Paul would create an &uot;out of sight, out of mind&uot; syndrome for Minnesota’s agriculture sector. A move outside the metro area would likely weaken the MDA’s ability to represent the interests of agriculture at the center of state government. It would mean a loss of interaction with other agencies and organizations – including the legislature. It would weaken important working relationships and severely limit the department’s ability to testify on and follow key legislation. Whether part of a Republican, Democrat or Independence Party administration, the MDA would not have a strong voice with which to represent the state’s farm sector for decades to come.
Also, a move out of St. Paul would diminish the MDA’s urban visibility and erode its perceived relevance among metro stakeholders. Right now the MDA provides many services to urban Minnesota, but as the state and its legislature become more urban the &uot;out of sight, out of mind&uot; syndrome could handicap the agency. After all, future legislatures dominated by a new generation of urban lawmakers would have little reason to support what they would see as a &uot;rural&uot; agency.
There’s a good reason Minnesota Farmers Union, the Minnesota Farm Bureau and many other Minnesota farm groups have their headquarters within a 20-minute drive of the State Capitol. These groups represent greater Minnesota constituents, but they found they can serve the interests of their constituents better by locating their headquarters where state government’s decisions are made.
Clearly the state’s farm organizations recognize the importance of being located close to the center of state government. In fact, Minnesota Farm Bureau, the Minnesota Association of Cooperatives and the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association feel so strongly about this that each has recently come out against moving the MDA.
Some argue that moving the MDA to a community in greater Minnesota will bring the agency closer to the farmers it serves. That may be true for farmers in the immediate area around that community, but a move to Steele County, for example, would not place the agency any closer to farmers in Steams County, Lyon County or Polk County.
Another argument you may hear is that relocating the agency to a community in greater Minnesota would bring jobs and economic activity to the chosen community. That’s true to a point, but keep in mind that almost half the MDA staff is already stationed outside St. Paul in 55 counties across the state. In fact, two of the employees most recently hired by the agency work out of Mankato and Willmar.
Lawmakers and farmers must ask whether a modest, one-time economic boost for one town is worth taking the very real risk of marginalizing Minnesota farmers’ most important advocate in state government – especially at a time when agriculture is finding it more and more difficult to tell its story to the general public.
Gene Hugoson is the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.