Almost 200 hundred years ago, the great Frederic Bastiat imagined a letter that a good Minister of Agriculture should write to all farmers to improve their condition. This could not be more topical than nowadays.

Here is the translation of this fictional text:

"" The Minister of Agriculture to Farmers

CITIZENS,

A fortunate incident has prompted a thought that never occurred to my predecessors: that, like me, you belong to the human species. You possess intelligence to use, and, furthermore, the genuine source of all progress, the desire to improve your condition.

Considering this, I wonder how I can be of service to you. Shall I teach you agriculture? It is likely that you know it better than I do. Shall I inspire in you the desire to replace bad practices with good ones? But this desire exists in you at least as much as in me. Your interest gives birth to it, and I do not see how my circulars could speak louder to your ears than your own interest.

The prices of things are known to you. Therefore, you have a guide that indicates what is better to produce or not produce. My predecessor wanted to provide you with manufacturing jobs to occupy your days of unemployment. You could, he said, engage in this work to your advantage and that of the consumer. But of two things, either it is true, and then what is the need for a ministry to point out a lucrative job within your reach? You will discover it yourselves if you are not of an inferior race afflicted with idiocy—an assumption on which my ministry is based, and one I do not accept. Or it is not true; in that case, how harmful would it be for the minister to impose sterile work on all the farmers of France through administrative measures!

So far, my collaborators and I have exerted much effort with no results, except to make you pay taxes, for note that with each of our movements corresponds a tax. Even this circular is not free. It will be the last. Henceforth, to prosper in agriculture, rely on your efforts, not on those of my bureaucrats; turn your eyes to your fields, not to a building on Rue de Grenelle.""

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