By JEFFERY GOSS
Missouri Correspondent

STONE COUNTY, Mo. — Up until a few years ago, it was easy to sell hay to buyers all over Missouri. Farmers simply listed their names, telephone numbers and kind of hay available, and this information was published in the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s hay directory, mailed for free to all who requested it.

If one were to ask most Missouri farmers what happened to the hay directory, they would say it simply ceased to exist.

“I did have a lot of calls (from) the directory,” said Peter Carter, a farmer who lives near Carthage and sells alfalfa hay.

Carter’s business has been declining in the past two or three years, an effect he attributes to weather and market conditions as well as the loss of the directory as a venue for cost-free advertising.

Why would an important, well-established agricultural publication simply disappear? “You have to get it off (the internet),” explained Jim Thompson, an agricultural business specialist employed with the University of Missouri Extension Center in Lebanon. “Nobody is printing it now.”

It turns out the Missouri Hay Directory is one of several publications the state agriculture department has quit printing, and now operates as computer data only. This puts the information out of reach for most of the state’s farmers. According to some estimates, only 25 percent of Missouri’s full-time farmers are computer users.

The Missouri Brand Book, Missouri Feed Report, Agri-Missouri Buyers’ Guide and Missouri Nursery report are other state publications which have recently been discontinued as printed reports, and made available only as electronic files. It is part of a trend among state governments to save money and paper by “going digital.”

Problems arise, however, when this effort includes eliminating printed versions. Farmers and other rural residents have found themselves cut off from important information or services. Many agricultural advocacy and information groups, moreover, have overlooked the problem, likely because the representatives and policy directors deal mostly with the computer-connected sector of the rural population.

“I would have to say that if the county offices aren’t doing their job, then they are,” said Arkansas Farm Service Agency (FSA) staffer Scott Fancher, in response to whether non-computer-users are being underserved.
Fancher, who works in Carroll County (where there is no county agriculture agent), is among the primary sources of public information on farm-related topics in his immediate area. He and other government agents, both state and USDA, are intended to act as intermediaries between central agency offices and the local farming population, which mayor may not have Internet access.
He and other local-level agents are charged with supplying the information to farmers – by printing out the reports and mailing, faxing or letting individuals pick them up at the offices. Agents can answer simple questions by telephone, an additional method of transmitting relevant facts.

Thus, as Fancher sees it, the rural population is not being deprived of information unless the FSA and state Agriculture Department (MDA) offices in certain counties are failing to “do their job.”

Christine Tew, who handles media relations for the MDA, maintains a similar view of the changes.

“The Department works to ensure that Missourians have access to the agricultural ... information they need, and encourages individuals needing assistance to contact the Department via telephone (or) by USPS mail,” Tew stated in a memo, on whether the department is eliminating information services to non-computer-users.

While acknowledging some publications are no longer being printed for general distribution, she also noted “other publications, such as the weekly livestock market summaries, are available as either electronic or printed subscriptions.”
Some organizations, such as the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), consider expanded rural Internet access programs to be the solution for access limitations as a result of conversion to digital format. In the NFU’s current policy book, approved by delegates to its annual convention, Article IX Section E devotes an entire 121-word item to campaigning for “rural access to technology and information,” which it equates with deployment of broadband and wireless computer network infrastructure in rural areas.

Other farm advocates, however, see the issue differently. They note that broadband and wireless technology often involves confiscating farmland through eminent domain, and many farmers have carried on successfully until now without the Web. Still others find the information available on the Internet tends to be shallow and unreliable, and – in the case of some agricultural topics – limited in scope.

“It’s a crazy electronic world where many people think they can get any information they need off the Internet,” said L.R. Miller, vice president of the Small Farms Conservancy, in a widely circulated commentary. “Not so.
“The Internet seldom cares about those obscure facts, methods, tools and ideas which are central to the vitality of the small farm. We continue to find these things in good books. Luckily, the future is bright for the printed word; otherwise, we’d be stuck with cyber manure.”