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RALEIGH - Nearly four years since a malfunctioning voting machine threw the election into doubt and even longer since scandal rocked the department, many voters may have forgotten there's such a thing as an elected commissioner of agriculture.

"We (the department) touch every citizen in this state every day, all day, 365 days a year, and they don't know we're there. And I think that's good government," said Steve Troxler, the Browns Summit farmer who holds the office.

Troxler, a Republican, is seeking his second term against Ronnie Ansley, a Democrat from Wake Forest.

The sprawling department is involved in a hodgepodge of regulatory activity, including making sure checkout scanners ring up purchases correctly and making sure food is safe at the supermarket. And, of course, the commissioner serves as a spokesman, advocate and regulator of the state's farmers and North Carolina's largest industry.

Troxler and Ansley seem to share many goals. Both say North Carolina needs to be involved in producing biofuels, and both say the state needs to do more to protect family farms and make sure the food supply is safe.

Where they differ is on how well Troxler has performed.

"I don't feel that the leadership of going into the counties to find out what they need and doing the things that we need to do to helps the state's economy, growing jobs across North Carolina, has been as effective as it should have been under this administration," Ansley said. "I feel you need to get out and talk to people, not just show up at places, but you need to listen."

Asked about this, Troxler said, "There's not any truth to that."

"I don't believe there is any other statewide official who travels as much has I do right now," Troxler said. "I live the life of the agriculture community. I don't have to fake it or make up reasons to go somewhere."

Ansley gives little credit to Troxler for any positive aspect of the department's operations, preferring to credit things such as state fair improvements to Britt Cobb, who finished the term of Meg Scott Phipps when she resigned under the scrutiny of corruption charges.

On biofuels, for example, Ansley said the department should have more aggressively pushed the state into switchgrass production and research on making fuel from nonfood crops.

"From at least when gas went to $3 a gallon for the first time about three years ago, the Ag Department under the current leadership didn't do anything to truly push biofuels in a large, hard way," Ansley said. "We should have been doing it prior to that."

That's not true, Troxler said, pointing to the biofuels campus in Oxford, the site of a former federal tobacco research facility.

"We were able to take some money that had been allocated for a study and use that money to retrofit the buildings and the grounds to help bring that campus up there," Troxler said. As well, the department is producing biodiesel now at its Salisbury research farm and plans to create a bigger biodiesel plant at the Oxford site that will use, in part, used cooking oil from the state fair.

Troxler presides over the fair by virtue of his post. But Ansley said he'll have a booth there this year.

"If they pay the price, they get a booth," Troxler said.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker @news-record.com