My wife recently gave me a coupon for a 50 percent off coupon to a half-price book store. Yes, that’s right, half off a half-price book. Bound and determined to find something to buy, I searched high and low in the store.

I came across a copy of the book Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman. This classic by the Nobel Prize winner examines the relationship between freedom and economics. First published in 1979, the authors assert that our freedom and affluence are being undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies and spending in Washington - a situation known all too well to American farmers.

During this Thanksgiving week there have been lots of expressions of thanks to farmers for the bounty we enjoy at our dinner tables. Yet, it is the freedom to produce and profit that has made it possible for farmers to grace our tables with the quality and variety of food we enjoy.

A careful reading of the history of American agriculture reveals that all of the major advances in food, fiber and fuel production have come as a result of economic signals from the marketplace.
Farmers will increase production when there is profit in it. They will adopt new techniques and technology when it will benefit their bottom line.

From hybrid seed to GPS, the free market has driven the advances in agricultural production. But, increasingly, this freedom is being chipped away. The heavy hand of government has always been part of agriculture, but more and more this hand has been on the throat of American agriculture, strangling the system that has been the envy of the world.

The Friedmans postulate that good intentions have unintended consequences when the government steps in as middleman. We have heard a lot of good intentions out of Washington in the past two years: improving food safety, improving child nutrition, helping the rural economy, cleaning up the environment, creating jobs and, of course, reducing our dependence on imported oil.

All of these and a host of others have been used to justify billions of dollars in new spending and hundreds of new regulations.
Regulations have been enacted that limit the number of animals a livestock producer can raise and how he can house and feed his animals.

Efforts are under way to regulate how grain farmers can raise their crops. In addition, laws are being passed that take away some of our food choices because someone said certain foods are bad for us. The result has been to make it harder for farmers to farm and small businesses to operate.

This Thanksgiving consumers should give thanks for the bounty provided by American agriculture. Those of us in agriculture should be thankful for the freedom we have to farm. But we all should resolve to fight against efforts to regulate and legislate our freedom.

Only as long as we have the freedom to choose what we grow and what we eat, will we continue to enjoy the fruits of the American harvest.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.