Full Text of the Excerpt

JM: Speak generally about your sense of the range of impact of the State Department of Agriculture. LF: I don’t think the State Department of Agriculture has had any impact on the state of agriculture at all. It performs its regulatory functions, and that's about what it does. It inspects gasoline, chicken plants, and it's a regulatory agency of inspection. But as far as the growth, the dynamics of agriculture in the state, it has had no effect whatsoever. JM: What's the impact, in your view, been of all the university-based ag research, say at NC State? LF: Research at NC State has been very good. Actually, the system that puts cooperative agriculture in the counties has become much, much better. They started out in the '30s by Mr. Wallace's social program. There's still a little of that still going on, but today it's affected pretty much agriculture. They've still got a few women teaching farm wives that drive up in sixty thousand-dollar Mercedes how to can cucumbers, but generally that mindset has left. Particularly the research at the university has been very good and the cooperative service [has been good] because they have found a niche. They do work in agriculture and got away from trying to be a social program.