Since our family has been involved in direct production agriculture for more than 100 years, we're quite interested in discussions dealing with farm policy. The '07 farm talks indeed promise to be lively.

While there are many facets to U.S. farm policy, one that draws a huge amount of attention both by farmers and non-farmers alike is farm subsidies.

And while U.S. farm payments certainly aren't the world's greatest, they nonetheless have received a lot of attention. Long term, World Trade Organization rulings promise we'll see changes because some of our subsidies were determined to be illegal.

In addition, you have to wonder how much good farm subsidies really do since they're so quickly capitalized into land prices.

The idea has been raised periodically to do away with all farm subsidies. Not that an unsubsidized or less-subsidized U.S. agriculture would be all bad. But certainly it would fuel consolidation like we have never seen before.

One of the main casualties would be small farms, small towns and rural areas as farm size dramatically increases while farm numbers drop like autumn leaves. Ultimately, food costs may actually decline as bigger, more profitable and lower-cost farms become the rule.

But this is probably not what we're going to do because social costs will be seen as too high. And land prices could be hurt badly. Over time, though, we'll still move in that direction but at a much slower pace.

One of the primary discussions in on-going farm policy discussions is not so much how we should subsidize U.S. farms but how we can encourage the farm industry. For example, a justified subsidy was the hard white wheat incentive payment to encourage production of a new class of wheat to open up foreign markets.

Other supports are less justified. For instance, some say the U.S. government should add more subsidies to crop insurance so we can insure up to the 85 percent level, then plant dryland corn with no more than 6 inches of moist soil Ð in a drought no less. Is this the extent of the American entrepreneurial experience?

Programs like this absolutely send the wrong message not only to farmers but to the non-farm public alike.

I've also been intrigued as to why dryland corn acreage has increased generally at the expense of dryland grain sorghum. In previous years, KSU Farm Management Program's enterprise analysis showed dryland corn rarely covered all costs while dryland milo was consistently profitable. So why less milo?

My theory is that things outside the market, such as better insurance or higher federal payments, encourage one crop over another. To me this violates one of the 10 commandments of farm policy: Thou Shall Let The Market Decide.

I think we can look to the specialty-crops people for justified new direction in farm policy. Fruit and vegetable growers say they don't want direct cash payments. Instead they want help with market development and promotion, targeted research and help with sanitary and phytosanitary issues. Great idea!

To me, research makes a lot of sense as a justified way to support farming. We all know the story Ð give a man a fish or show him how to fish. We need to dramatically increase not only state land-grant university budgets on research, but get USDA to underwrite more of the burden. And, yes, farmers need to contribute to these research efforts as well.

Help us find the most profitable crops and show us how to grow them. Help us develop new higher-yielding crops that have better disease resistance. How much less subsidy do we need when we have a new wheat variety that yields three or five more bushels per acre? Or that doesn't require $20-per-acre fungicides. We need wheat for industrial uses, for ethanol production and wheat or other crops like triticale for feedgrains. This is what former U.S. Ag Secretary Earl Butz talked aboutÑadapt or die.

Remember, too, an essential role of farm policy is long-range and strategic planning. Not only by regions and states, but also by commodities. For instance, looking 25 years ahead, what are we going to do when the Ogallala Aquifer is dried up? Best bet is this valuable natural resource is already half gone.

How will we in the central and southern Plains support the crown jewel of U.S. agriculture Ð the huge beef and dairy cattle industry as well as our swine industry Ð without irrigation or with significantly less of it?

What are we doing to develop the alternative crops and production programs that will be needed. Has anyone written the long-range plan for evolving High Plains agriculture?

Maybe we should also ask why do we turn to the government for help with things that we can often do ourselves? For example, one of the best ways possible in dealing with risk is simply watching your debt-to-asset ratio. Aren't we farmers in charge of that? Farmers and everyone else needed massive government intervention in the l930s. But until we have another national crisis, can't we do with less?

Finally, I wanted to make a comment about the Conservation Reserve Program. Granted, this program which arose in the mid Ô80s ag crisis has done wonders for soil and water conservation and for wildlife. But beyond that, it has to be ranked as one of the worst farm programs of all time in terms of what it has done to our rural and agricultural infrastructure as well as to our schools, churches, hospitals, elevators and local businesses and, in general, to our way of life.

Over the past l00 years, probably the top two greatest threats to the High Plains were a conservation problem in the '30s and ironically, a conservation program that started a half century later.

With over 3 million acres now in CRP in Kansas and 36 million nationwide, this program is now our state's third largest crop behind wheat and corn. And yet this land produces nothing. For all practical purposes, the acreage has simply vanished from our rural counties.

But with all the interest in ethanol and bio-energy, it's time to not only cap the program, but also allow non-penalty early exits from CRP.

Louise Ehmke, chairman of the Governor's Agriculture Advisory Board, farms in Lane and Scott counties of western Kansas with her husband, Vance. The Ehmke family homesteaded there in 1886, the same year the county was formed.