[StBernard] The Times-Picayune Endorses Mike Strain

[Westley Annis]

The Times-Picayune Endorses Mike Strain

 

Read the full article below or click here
<http://www.mikestrain.org/Default.aspx> :

 

The Times-Picayune

Ag commissioner: Mike Strain

10/08/2007

 

Louisiana's rich culture and history are rooted in great part in our
agricultural traditions.  Even in the age of the microchip, agriculture
remains a $10 billion industry that employs thousands of Louisianaians and
affects what all of us pay for food at the grocery store.

 

But Louisiana's agriculture industry is in trouble.  From rice to dairy to
sugar, more and more farmers are having trouble staying competitive in a
global marketplace.

 

Which is why this election for commissioner of agriculture is of great
importance to all Louisianaians.

 

The agriculture department is badly in need of change.  The department in
recent years has run amok, particularly as it embarked on an ill-conceived
and wasteful building campaign.  Taxpayers are now carrying a $56 million
debt risk for a syrup mill that's not meeting production projections.  Yet
the department sought to build a separate $135 million mill last year until
public pressure helped kill the project.

 

Louisiana needs a new agriculture commissioner with the vision and the
expertise to refocus the department on its core mission of promoting and
improving agriculture.  We believe the best candidate to come in and turn
the ship around is Mike Strain.

 

Mr. Strain, who is leaving a state representative seat, is a Covington
veterinarian, and his family has long run a dairy business.  He has
represented rural interests well in the Legislature, and he has a
well-conceived vision of what the agriculture department needs to do and a
strategy to get it done.  He also understands the department's relevance to
urban areas, where it regulates cash registers, gasoline pumps and
warehouses.

 

He pledges to thoroughly review the department to make it more efficient and
less wasteful.  He also wants to create synergy between farmers, scientists
and the state to come up with region- and commodity-specific plans to
improve production and open new markets.

 

Mr. Strain vows to abandon the department's ill-conceived building campaign.
Instead, he wants to use state resources as leverage to promote private
investment.

 

Thousands of families who make a living off the land deserve an efficient
and effective agriculture department, and Mr. Strain is the best candidate
to deliver it.