Issue 2 is one of those awful bills that gives no one any indication what the genuine upshot of its passage will be. It could be great; it could be awful.

My concern as a small organic farmer is that the regulatory board put in place would kill me with regulations that are cost prohibitive and favor large agribusiness. Rod Dreher talked about this extensively in his book Crunchy Cons. I believe that Issue 2 would put a further agribusiness stranglehold on markets, effectively killing off the little guys, especially those who are trying to find a legitimate way around the insane bureaucracy of government controls. I mean, if 2 passes, I may not be able to have a henhouse or some goats without filling out 8,000 forms and submitting to all sorts of expensive tests and approved caging and government-mandated nonsense, which wouldn’t make it cost-effective for me at all.

On the other hand, some people are screaming that if 2 does not pass, the feds are going to rush into the state vacuum and mandate more draconian regulations, or that PETA will get their plan put in place.

I hate this issue. I don’t have enough vision to see what the actual outcome will be, but nothing about 2 makes me happy. Call me libertarian, but all this regulation garbage has got to be rethought. It stymies competition, isn’t evenly applied, isn’t enforced as written—it just plain doesn’t work. And now we want more of it. Sigh.

What does it mean for a small organic farmer? That depends on the board, but if the board does put an end to some of the less humane holding techniques, it might raise prices on garden-variety agrabusinesses, which, all else being equal, will raise the demand for organic goods.

Since you’re probably not doing things that will get the Humane Society hot and bothered that a board might change, your primary effect would be to be supportive of the proposal.

However, that board would mean extra red tape, more government spending and more spending by the farm industry; as a conservative, you might not like that.

Rick Hiebert brings journalistic integrity, wit and a faith in Jesus Christ to his coverage of our Canadian NAR folk that is unique and needed.

Get well.