Ag News
Harper offers sustainability committee topics to consider
Posted on Sep 02, 2026 at 13:57 PM
Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper offered his take on the challenges facing Georgia’s farmers during the first meeting of the Joint Committee on the Generational Sustainability of Family Farms, held Aug. 20 at the Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agricenter in Perry.
“Our responsibility isn’t simply to preserve the industry,” Harper said. “Our responsibility is to make sure that there is an agricultural industry worth inheriting for the generations behind us.”
Harper laid out seven key issues for the committee to consider:
• Consolidation and competition. Harper pointed out that 85% of the beef in the U.S. is packed by four companies, two of which (JBS USA and National Beef Packing Company) are owned by foreign entities, and 40% of the pork is packed by one Chinese company, which purchased Smithfield Foods in 2013.
“Of the five biggest players in the protein market, three of them are owned by foreign corporations,” Harper said. “That’s a problem. We’ve got to work on it on the Washington [national] level, but I think we’ve got to really take a serious look at this on the state level to see if there’s a way that we can play into this.”
For instance, in May Harper asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation into the merger between Sysco and Restaurant Depot earlier this year, saying that the deal would further weaken the U.S. food supply chain and increase costs for American restaurants and their customers.
“We don’t need less competition,” he said. “We need more competition in the marketplace. When our farmers have fewer buyers, input suppliers and fewer competitors and fewer choices, consumers … have fewer options.”
• Expanding foreign & domestic markets. Last year, Georgia growers shipped peaches to Mexico for the first time in almost three decades, which Harper called a huge win for Georgia’s peach producers.
“The best farm program is a profitable market,” Harper said. “We’ve got to increase market access.”
He also suggested looking at more opportunities for farmers to sell to school systems, hospitals, universities, grocery and export markets.
• Level playing field. U.S. farmers, he said, face higher input costs and more stringent regulations than their counterparts in other countries. He noted that perhaps the state could seek to make the competition fairer.
“Are there taxes? Is there energy regulation? Are there insurance or transportation costs? Financing or permitting that we can look at on the state level that adds cost to Georgia agriculture?” Harper said. “I think we ought to dig into that as a committee to see if there’s some of those that we can get rid of on the state level while we continue to work with our federal partners to address it, to address trade on the federal level.”
• Access to capital. The question of how a young farmer can realistically take on a farming operation without inherited wealth poses a significant barrier for the next generation of farmers. Land and equipment are expensive, interest rates are high, and agriculture and forestry, he said, require enormous amounts of capital.
“Less than 7% of farmers in our state are under the age of 35 right now. I think the biggest challenge we’re going to see in agriculture and forestry over the next decade or two is the generational wealth challenge.”
• Processing value agriculture. Harper said that while Georgia producers do a really good job growing commodities, more could be done to add value to the commodities before they leave the state.
• Disaster preparedness and resiliency. Recent storms have made it clear that disaster preparedness is vital and necessary to ensure Georgia agriculture can thrive.
“Profitability isn’t enough when you have these storms and challenges,” he said. “You can do everything right and lose it all in one night.”
Recovery requires money, Harper said, but there are also other ways the state can support its farmers in times of crisis, whether it’s ensuring there are generators available to keep operations going or utilizing law enforcement to help turn away threats like highly pathogenic avian influenza, the New World Screwworm or Mexican cartels.
“We need to look at more of a permanent agricultural disaster framework for our state,” Harper said. “Not something that replaces crop insurance or federal programs, but something that allows our state to respond rapidly and fill in the gap whenever disasters threaten the long-term viability of agriculture in our state.
• Protect rural Georgia. “Our farm families and agriculture can’t succeed if we don’t have access to quality health care, if we don’t have access to quality education, if we don’t have broadband infrastructure … We’re going to have to have more access to those types of things to ensure that agriculture continues to succeed.”
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