The 2003 Missouri Governor's Conference on Agriculture made a fresh approach to boosting the fortunes of agriculturalists. The conference and its speakers focused on entrepreneurialism. Some call it rural entrepreneurialism, some agripreneurialism. Regardless of the name, the idea is that rural folks carve more money out of farming by thinking differently about what they do. But the notion of rural entrepreneurs isn't wholly new. Last year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank published several articles on the idea and has had at least one conference about it. John Gardner, the associate dean for extension at the University of Missouri, Columbia has been pushing the idea for a few years now.

Much of what we see as and call "entrepreneurialism" is the fruit borne from the buzz phrase "value-added" that blossomed a few years ago. It means adjusting to the fact that the only way to extract better profit from agricultural endeavor is to climb the value chain.

Yet, the proposition that agricultural entrepreneurialism needs "built" is a game of semantics. I make the case for that supposition from anecdotal experience. Having traveled the farms of the Midwest for a decade, I've seen a great supply of the entrepreneurial spirit. There is no shortage of entrepreneurs or the ingenuity and ambition it takes to make that label.

In that light, the bigger news from the conference was almost an aside.

Amidst the talk of coaxing the entrepreneurial environment of the state, director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Peter Hofherr, said that it was his goal to guard against over regulation in agriculture and see that regulations are updated within the context of today's agriculture.

Ah, now there is a glimmer of hope.

Anyone who would like to help agriculture, along with encouraging farmers' spirit to organize, and aside from supplying tax incentives and technical advice, ought to pull up the yoke that burdens so many-haphazard, stifling regulation. Whether it is overzealous county-based health regulations that keep modern agriculture at bay or state-wide permitting processes that entangle upstart businesses, that regulatory yoke costs more money than you think. To be sure, it costs the upfront money for licenses, fees and special equipment. But it costs plenty in discouragement, too. Capital is too rare and precious to throw into the regulatory grinder. Count on the fact that people with capital for new agricultural enterprises will shop around state by state to find the environment most favorable for their business.

To that end, University of Missouri Commercial Ag coordinator Rex Ricketts and his team are putting together a project that shows how Missouri compares to its neighbors in the realm of regulatory control. First they're looking at animal agriculture among a few states. Eventually, they want to have a database that's more comprehensive. The findings should be elucidating-showing where and why a particular state may lose agricultural interests.

With such results we don't have to call for radical freedom in business. We've seen enough to know that commerce requires curbs-checks and balances to prevent the aberrational yet devastating Enron from destroying an entire business sector. And sneer if you must, but there's no responsible case to be made against reasonable regulations.

Still, as constituents of Commercial Ag and the Missouri Department of Agriculture, it is up to you to take these institutions at their word; take what they provide and use your collective voice to pressure government for workable regulations. Nobody else will do it. Failing that, it's your entrepreneurial spirit that will asphyxiate in the red tape.