MONMOUTH – Sitting in the kitchen of her 200-year-old farmhouse, the sounds of cows and pigs echoing across the snow from a nearby barn, Nancy Smith is a world away from the goings-on at the State House in Augusta.

Once she’s fed the chickens and llamas, and helped milk the cows and slopped the hogs, however, that’s just where she is headed – in her role as a state representative.

As one of the state’s most tireless advocates for Maine agriculture, Smith formerly was an active member of the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee and recently visited China to promote Northeast agriculture.

Last month, she was elected vice president of State Agriculture and Rural Leaders at a meeting in Arizona. This will allow the two-term legislator to be an effective voice for Maine on international trade, biotechnology and rural job development.

That’s a lot of juggling for a wife of a dairyman, mother of three and state legislator.

“I love the balance,” she said Monday. “There are the chores, the Legislature and then home.”

But Maine’s agriculture industry is at a crossroads, she said, and “we need the call to arms.’

“We are absolutely at a make-or-break moment in time,” Smith said. “We could energize the agriculture industry and solidify it for the next 50 years or not.”

Smith said there always will be agriculture in Maine. The state, however, is in jeopardy of losing it as an integral part of what Maine is.

“There are so many pressures on farmers today,” she said, listing sprawl, commodity pricing, aging farmers, and the shortage of large-animal veterinarians as reasons for the decline in Maine farms.

On the other hand, she said, Maine’s agriculture industry is the most diverse in New England. Smith cited goals of a new state food policy to have 80 percent of all food eaten in Maine, raised or produced in Maine, as a sign that the key to success will be supporting local agriculture.

“Our focus needs to be on talking to fellow Mainers and New Englanders about what it means to buy local and what the difference is between consumers and customers,” she said.

She used her own diversified, grass-based dairy farm as an example. For every dairy cow that she and her husband, Ivan, tend, they help support local businesses. These include a grain dealer, fuel dealers, insurance companies, a veterinarian, a local general store, five refrigeration and equipment dealers, a local butcher, a Maine milk processor, a milk hauler, three tractor dealerships and several part-time employees.

And that’s not counting the town, which benefits from property taxes.

“The healthier we are, the healthier they are,” Smith said of her suppliers. “Farming provides a ripple effect through the economy.”

The challenge, she said, is in convincing Maine people to buy Maine food and products

“When people come to us to buy off the farm or at the farmers market, they are already believers,” she said. “The question is how to change others. It is a mind-set, a change in priorities.”

Smith said she is not saying Maine consumers shouldn’t eat Florida-grown citrus or Hawaiian-grown pineapple. “But for heaven’s sake, buy your apples from Maine growers,” she said.

It is time for strong leadership in the Maine Department of Agriculture, Smith pointed out. “We need a powerhouse,” she said.

Smith said that Maine is 20 years ahead of New England in terms of legislation but 10 years behind Vermont.

“In Vermont, you don’t have to explain why agriculture is important,” she said. “Urban legislators have to understand that their constituents eat and need access to quality, local foods.”

Because of budget constraints, regulation is the top priority within the state’s agriculture department, Smith said. “Whatever is left goes to marketing. It ought to be hand-in-hand, equal priorities.”

Without developing agriculture in Maine, she said, “the alternative is call centers and senior citizens homes.”

What makes agriculture in Maine so exciting, Smith said, is its diversity.