Farmers Plow Fresh Ground In Cyberspace

Let’s face it. Even in cyberspace, government farm policy can be boring.

On Friday, America cruised past another mile marker on the vaunted Information Superhighway, as farmers got a chance to ask questions of House Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in a snazzy new way.

The session took place on America Online, a popular on-line computer service that lets farflung users “talk” to one another by typing on their computers. Friday morning about 130 people in Kansas, Indiana, Tennessee and elsewhere were linked together to query Roberts in Washington.

And what topics came up? Well, nothing that would cause a parent to worry: peanut allotments, the dairy export incentive program, the 1995 farm bill and a lot of government initials (FIFRA, ARPs, CBO, CRP).

The witty Roberts signed off by telling participants, “I am going back to typing class.”