Pennsylvania and Agriculture: Keeping Each Other Healthy

PENNSYLVANIA AND AGRICULTURE: Keeping Each Other Healthy
http://joehoeffel2010.com/agriculture

Agriculture is Pennsylvania's number one industry. Twenty-six percent of Pennsylvania's area is farmland — nearly eight million acres. Yet while Pennsylvania's agriculture is large, it isn't large-scale. Our farmland is divided into over 63,000 farms, and 41% of them have fewer than 50 acres; 82% have fewer than 180 acres.

But the most notable statistic is that 91% of Pennsylvania farms are owned by families or individuals, the fourth highest percent in the country. Agriculture is our number one industry, but it isn't "big business": it's 57,000 families.


SMALL CUTS HAVE A BIG IMPACT

This year the Department of Agriculture's budget was cut 11%, and these $8 million in cuts will have an enormous impact — not only for farmers but for our entire commonwealth.

About 16% of Pennsylvania is cropland, with an annual production of $1.87 billion, including 58% of the entire country's mushrooms. Another 10% is pasture, producing $3.94 billion annually, primarily from dairy products: Pennsylvania is the fifth largest milk producing state in the country.

With just a $76 million state investment — now $67.8 million — Pennsylvania agriculture "generates $5.8 billion in annual cash receipts and translates into $45 billion in total economic benefit to the state's economy," according to the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Some of the most worrisome cuts include those to crop insurance, research, and marketing.

Farmers pay most of the cost of crop insurance, but the commonwealth makes a contribution. In 1999, that contribution was 33%; in 2008, it was down to 5%; and for the coming year, the total budget for the crop insurance has been cut again, from $1.1 million down to $600,000. As the contribution goes down, many farmers are forced to trim their budgets and assume more risk — risk we all share, should their crops fail.

State funding towards agricultural research goes largely towards increasing crop yield — growing more food more efficiently. Here, the cuts affect not just farmers, but research scientists and those who produce the technology which makes these innovations possible. This budget has been reduced from $1.6 million to $1 million.

And the state support for marketing has disappeared: $518,000 for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture has been eliminated, money which goes towards supporting "buy local" campaigns and connecting farmers to consumers.

As governor, I will restore the budget for the Department of Agriculture through an extraction tax on the natural gas produced from the Marcellus Shale.


HELPING PENNSYLVANIA'S DAIRIES

The dairy industry represents 42% of the entire Pennsylvania agriculture economy. Our 7,600 dairy farms rank us second in the US and provide over 40,000 jobs (from farmers to veterinarians to feed providers to accountants). Located within a day's drive of 50% of the country's population, Pennsylvania milk nourishes people from Washington to Boston and beyond.

But the past year has been awful for dairy farmers. The Center for Dairy Excellence estimates that farmers experienced "net losses of approximately $1,000 per cow for calendar year 2009." This will have a dramatic cascading effect if unchecked: we could lose 25% of our dairy farms, leading to a loss of 100,000 cows, 11,000 jobs, and "a negative impact on rural economies to the tune of nearly $1.4 billion."

Several solutions can be put into place for little or no financial investment from the state. As governor, I will strongly urge our Congressional delegation to take action on two key pieces of federal legislation for dairies. The Federal Farm Bill created a bi-partisan committee to evaluate our current federal order system and federal dairy policy, but promised funding for this committee has still not been provided — this is simply inexcusable. We must also get Congress to increase the federal dairy support price.

Within Pennsylvania there are also some important and low-cost ways to help. I will urge the Milk Marketing Board to do everything in its power to help struggling dairy farmers increase sales and revenue. I will also support the creation of a "Pennsylvania Dairy Caucus" at their recommendation to focus on dairy issues in the legislature.

But renewed funding will also provide long-term relief and support to our dairy industry. Only 1 in 20 Pennsylvania dairy producers purchase risk management options ("crop insurance" for their cows), compared to 1 in 2 Midwestern dairy producers. We need to both increase risk management funding in general and allocate funding for a "dairy options pilot program" to help dairy farmers protect their investments, funding I will seek as governor.

Investing in research can also help the dairy industry, something Wisconsin has ably demonstrated over the past decade. There, tax credits for dairy facility modernizations and renewable energy projects on dairy farms resulted in over $200 million in tax credits from 2003-2007, translating into a 10% increase in dairy production from 2004-2008. I will explore similar programs we can implement in Pennsylvania to stimulate research, green energy, and infrastructure developments while simultaneously boosting dairy production.


NEW SKILLS FOR A NEW CENTURY

Education will be one of my top priorities as governor, and in two key ways education is vital to the well-being of agriculture in Pennsylvania.

With half of all current farmers in the US likely to retire in the next decade, we must encourage and educate the next generation of farmers. One of the biggest barriers to access for new farmers is training — and farming often seems deceptively easy to people outside the industry. I am a strong supporter of community colleges, and will push for increased funding for community colleges in general and agricultural programs in specific, which will educate our new farmers, young and old.

But today, farming doesn't just mean operating a farm — it means operating a farm and a small business.

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture writes that "the future trend is that more and more people are looking for foods that are grown locally," and increasingly, Pennsylvania's farms are selling their products directly to consumers on the farms themselves, through roadside markets, at farmers markets, or through crop share associations. The recent growth of this direct marketing is remarkable: from 2008 to 2009, the number of farmers markets in the US grew by 13%!

Farms need to strategize more than ever before, performing market evaluations to identify a market; identify their best products, resources, and goals; and plan and grow their farm — and their business — accordingly. I support programs in marketing and business planning for farmers, such as those now offered by Penn State Extension.

This new direct-to-consumer economy also opens great opportunities for small businesses to thrive. In Philadelphia, Farm to City was named the 2008 Small Business of the Year for the Region by the US Small Business Association for its highly successful efforts in connecting farmers to farmers markets in the city. Sustainable businesses like these bridge communities and build both economic and social connections between our farms and cities. As governor I will give my fullest encouragement to such entrepreneurs.

Another critical component both to providing educational resources to farms and to helping farms become 21st century businesses is improving their internet access. A 2009 USDA Economic Research Service study found that "rural communities that had greater broadband internet access had greater economic growth."

Yet many areas of our commonwealth are still limited to slow dial-up connections, and where high-speed internet is available it is often prohibitively expensive. The Farm Bureau highlights the similarity of this issue today with rural telephone service in the early 20th century and notes that while the Communications Act of 1934 mandated universal telephone service, the updated Telecommunications Act of 1996 still only supported voice systems — not internet. As governor, I will urge our Congressional delegation to push for a 21st century update to these laws, but I will also work to find ways Pennsylvania can use tax incentives, grants, or regulations to increase broadband access throughout the commonwealth.


PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT AND OUR FARMS

The natural gas industry has seen explosive growth in Pennsylvania over the past year. This is an industry with tremendous economic potential, but also one which poses serious environmental risks. We have already seen streams devastated by industrial wastewater and land rendered unusable from pollution in the groundwater. Pennsylvania must act swiftly to regulate this industry responsibly to ensure the health and safety of our people and of our land and water.

I support an excise tax on natural gas, proceeds from which will reverse the agriculture budget cuts. Funds from this tax will be also be used in part to fully fund the Department of Environmental Protection in their efforts to enforce current and future regulations on the industry to protect our environment. And part of the excise tax will be dedicated to renewing Growing Greener (set to expire in 2011 and 2012), which has funded the Department of Agriculture's purchase of $80 million in easements for Pennsylvania farms.

Agriculture in Pennsylvania is a community industry, and that community includes all of us: the 57,000 farming families, the small businesses and educational institutions and research scientists, the farmers markets and everyone who shops at them, and every child whose school lunch comes straight from a Pennsylvania farm to the cafeteria. Farms aren't just our number one industry; they are the soul of our economy, and we all have to work together to keep them healthy.

Joe's support for farmers and agriculture is a main component of his economic Plan for Pennsylvania. Read more at http://joehoeffel2010.com/economy.