The Complete Patient

It’s a busy time on the farm these days. A few items:

--There’s this little movement gaining a foothold among Michigan cattle farmers opposed to the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that I guess you could call the beginnings of civil obedience. The state’s farm grapevine has it that at least some farmers plan to respond to the Michigan Department of Agriculture’s (MDA's) order to affix tags to all cattle by this March 1…by returning the MDA’s order letters to the agency…including a note to this effect: “I choose not to have my premises identified by the government.” (For background on the Michigan order letters, see my BusinessWeek.com column of earlier this month.)

No one farmer wants to be associated with leading the movement, and for good reason: the government has this nasty little habit of picking out individual farmers, and using them as examples to scare everyone else. Witness Richard Hebron, of the Family Farms Cooperative, who drove into a raw-milk sting last October.

--Also today, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is approving cloning of farm animals. It says it can’t find any difference between meat and milk from conventional animals and cloned animals. But we know it can’t be that simple. For now, major food processors are taking a wait-and-see attitude, apparently because much of the rest of the world isn’t nearly as sold on cloning as the FDA. Consumers are also said to be uncomfortable about the idea, but since when does agribusiness care about them?

--And the movement by farmers to sell directly to consumers continues to gain in popularity. I’ve tried to capture the dynamics of this change, from a farmer and business perspective, in my latest BusinessWeek.com column, just posted. The marketplace is making farming ever more attractive as a business, for those farmers willing to wade into the marketplace.