Mere days after the Butler Farm Show closed its gates, while the carnival lights, sounds and aromas still linger in our collective conscience, let’s consider a rhetorical question: Does anyone remember the grange? More precisely, does anyone remember what the grange in its heyday was all about?

The answer has a bearing on the new dairy policies announced last week by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

The national grange credits its origins to Oliver Hudson Kelley, a federal Department of Agriculture staffer assigned to survey farm conditions in the South following the Civil War in 1866.While touring the devastated Land of Cotton, Kelley conceived the idea that a fraternal organization of farmers from all sections of the country could help heal scars caused by the war, as well as improve the economic and social position of farm populations nationwide.

Kelley and seven associates — six men and one woman — founded the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry on Dec. 4, 1867. Pennsylvania formed a state chapter in 1873 with 25 local chapters.

The organization decided to champion equality for women, too. But that’s another story.

The foundation of the grange coincided with the birth of the land grant university. Under the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, schools like Penn State, Cornell and the Universities of New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Maryland were given tax dollars to educate farmers and homesteaders through agricultural and home extensions as well as formal coursework in farming, engineering and science. From their very beginnings, the granges took a hard stand against tax dollars subsidizing liberal arts education when they were earmarked for agriculture and engineering.

For several decades the granges were a formidable political and economic force. Membership in Pennsylvania peaked at 96,000 in 1922. Back then, the local grange hall was not only a beehive of social activity, but also the launchpad and home base for many political careers. Country fairs and farm shows were the equivalent of political conventions.

Why is this pertinent today? Consider that Butler County at one time had 430 dairy farms. That’s 430 farmers, their wives and adult children, plus farm hands and farm hands’ wives and adult children, most of them affiliated with a fraternal organization that champions equal rights for women; all of them engaged in an independent, entrepreneurial business and likely to vote as a bloc for candidates who will protect and promote their interests. That might be 5,000 or more highly motivated voters in Butler County alone.

Today the state grange membership is about 7,000. What once was 430 dairy farms in Butler County is now 25. The power of the dairy voting bloc has evaporated — and the influence of the grange has withered as well, its stand against subsidized liberal arts long forgotten.

This reality puts the pressure on the dairy industry to save itself. The key is that it is absolutely worth saving. Gov. Wolf is aware of economic pressures involved in conserving and expanding dairy markets, but he is not compelled by the a large bloc of dairy voters because that bloc no longer exists.

Nevertheless, Wolf’s dairy reforms must be embraced because they make economic sense, whether or not the farmers have the political clout that they once did.