For the purpose of encouraging and promoting agriculture, commerce, and industry, the state of North Dakota shall engage in the business of manufacturing and marketing farm products. For that purpose it shall establish a system of warehouses, elevators, flour mills, factories, plants, machinery, and equipment, owned, controlled, and operated by it under the name of North Dakota mill and elevator association. The business of the association, in addition to other matters specified in this chapter, may include anything that any private individual, corporation, or limited liability company lawfully may do in conducting a similar business except as restricted by the provisions of this chapter. In the creation of the association, it is the intention of the legislative assembly that all acts of the association are the acts of the state of North Dakota functioning in its sovereign and governmental capacity. The association is not a separate agency of the sovereign power, but is the state itself functioning.