Ag News

Farm Sustainability Committee hears about regulatory hurdles

In the third of its four meetings, the Georgia House & Senate Joint Committee on Generational Sustainability of Family Farms heard scheduled testimony focusing on legal topics affecting farms, updates from Georgia’s cotton and fruit/vegetable sectors, mental health and substance abuse. 

He wasn’t on the agenda for the Oct. 28 meeting at South Georgia State College (SGSC), but Pulaski County farmer Alan Nowell was invited to the podium, where he shared his view on the regulatory hurdles facing farmers.

“When I was starting out, if I faced what these guys are facing now, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” said Nowell, a Pulaski County Farm Bureau director who produces poultry and cattle on his farm near the Dodge County line.

As an example, Nowell relayed the experience of a young farming neighbor who, wanting to put in poultry houses, was required to get blueprints from an engineer at a cost of $13,000 to meet buffer zone requirements. Nowell suggested that the buffers should be addressed working through public agencies without involving engineers. He noted that when residential or commercial developers encounter these regulations and take on the costs, they can pass them on to the real estate buyers. Farmers cannot pass on their cost, he said.

“If you want to get more young people into farming, you’re going to have to make it more affordable to start out,” Nowell said.

The committee heard presentations from SGSC President Dr. SGSC President Greg Tanner, Harrison Pittman of the National Ag Law Center, Frank Richards with Second Harvest of South Georgia, Taylor Sills from the Georgia Cotton Commission, Chris Butts of the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association, Jeff Breedlove with the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse, and Gus Walters of the American Addiction Recovery Association.

Tanner welcomed the committee to the school’s campus in Douglas, noting that the school began as a district agricultural and mechanical school in 1906. Tanner discussed the school’s new associate degree program in agriculture, which started this semester.

Other states’ legislative efforts

National Agricultural Law Center Director Harrison Pittman gave a review of the center’s activities and discussed various state approaches to ag-related statutes on farmland preservation, ag data, the possibility of state farm bills, and more.

Pittman said states are starting to look at ways they can help farmers, noting that the ever-growing national debt coupled with the fact that 40% of farmers’ income coming from federal government payments make it seem increasingly likely that the 2018 farm bill will be the last farm bill.

“States may not be able to do as broad and deep as what the federal government has historically been able to do, but I think it’s an area that we’ve seen slowly increasing,” Pittman said. “States more and more are starting to look at what role can [they] play to help maintain, to help protect and help promote the ag industry in [their] states?”

As in Georgia, other states are seeking ways to conserve farmland. Pittman noted that North Carolina and Pennsylvania have both enacted measures aimed at farmland for farm use. North Carolina recently set aside almost $50 million for conservation easement grants. Pennsylvania has had a conservation easement grant program since the late 1980s, and according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, easement purchases have been approved for more than 660,000 acres.

“It’s an opportunity to keep that land in agricultural production or to prevent it from going into commercial and residential development,” Pittman said.

Pittman touched on states’ programs for young and beginning farmers, singling out Texas for its Young Farmer Grant Program, as well as those in Minnesota (Beginning Farm and Equipment Infrastructure Grant) and Kentucky (Next Generation Farmer Program). Most state-funded young farmer programs combined some mixture of direct-cash matching, tax credits and loans.

Commodity leaders emphasize infrastructure, research

Georgia Cotton Commission Executive Director Taylor Sills detailed the challenges facing cotton producers, among them competition from other cotton-producing nations, synthetic fibers and aging industry infrastructure.

Sills mentioned the Economic Assistance for Textile Mills, a farm bill program aimed at helping textile companies making capital improvements to upgrade aging mills. He noted a Texas program that helps mills there make energy efficiency upgrades.

“I think it would be wonderful if we can find a way to create a program similar to that,” Sills said.

He also said the Georgia Agricultural Commodity Commissions have been asked in recent years to take on costs that could be viewed as operating expenses for the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension.

“We’re happy to do it, but that’s about $275,000 in our budget that we could do some more basic research or invest more in neat promotional projects or something if we had access to those funds,” Sills said.

Sills asked the committee to find ways to build demand; support young farmers and first-handler agribusinesses.

Sills and Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association Executive Director Chris Butts each mentioned the need to maintain Extension specialists’ knowledge base through a succession plan as experienced researchers near retirement.

“Those are really critical positions of guys that are going to retire,” Butts said. “[It’s] an incredible knowledge base that is going to walk away. Ideally, we need replacements working with them for a year or two.”

Butts also reviewed barriers to business faced by specialty crop producers and asked the committee to consider a number of things, notably including increasing staffing of food safety personnel.

Commonality between farms, food banks

Second Harvest CEO Frank Richards talked about the state’s Farm to Food Bank program and detailed the challenges facing the food bank, the largest rural food bank in Georgia, serving 26 counties and a population of more than 160,000 people. Second Harvest pulls food from a variety of sources, from purchasing it to accepting donations, and then works with numerous private and public agencies to distribute it to those in need.

He stressed the need to support the farmers who produce the food Second Harvest provides and emphasized things farmers and food banks have in common.

“Bad weather can ruin our best home. Neither of us will receive to have enough money. All of us spend a whole lot of time trying to keep equipment running for one more year. We also share a lot of very basic beliefs,” Richards Said. “We don’t like to waste good food because way too much work went into growing it.”

Addiction and mental health

American Addiction Recovery Association CEO Jeff Breedlove emphasized that substance abuse is, among other things, a major job retention issue, particularly in agriculture, which employes hundreds of thousands of people in Georgia. Breedlove said that the stigma associated with mental health is the most dangerous aspect of addiction, because it works as a barrier to people seeking the help they need.

Gus Walters from the Board American Addiction Recovery Association Board of Governors reviewed the staggering numbers of deaths from drug overdoses and the factors that prompt farmers to turn to drugs, including weather, input costs, debt and cash flow, time, and legacy. Walters’ son, Austin, died from a fentanyl overdose and became the inspiration for Austin’s Law, which stiffened penalties for the distribution of fentanyl and targeted drug traffickers responsible for overdose deaths

Land conservation

Georgia Rep. David Jenkins noted that because farmers often seek multiple streams of income, land use considerations under CUVA covenants can become a sticking point for small farms. Jenkins also noted that local governments often lack the expertise to make a determination on what is or is not an agricultural practice.

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