Concerns for Georgia Farmers Shared at State of Agriculture
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Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper and local farmer Chris Hopkins spoke of their concerns about the future of agriculture and current problems that Georgia farmers are facing during the Greater Vidalia Chamber’s State of Agriculture event on Thursday, November 7.
Harper addressed the audience first, as he recounted the importance of agriculture and rural Georgia to the health of the state economy. “First and foremost, when it comes to rural Georgia, we cannot have prosperity and economic development without agriculture. The role that agriculture plays in our state every single day is vital. It is a significant part of our economy,” he began.
He informed the audience that agriculture was an $84 billion industry within the state; one in every seven jobs within Georgia are in the agriculture industry, and around 330,000 Georgians are employed through agriculture, as almost 17% of the state economy is tied to agriculture in some way.
“When you look at rural Georgia, it is one in three Georgians are employed in agriculture. It is a significant part of portfolios, lending institutions, financial institutions in your community. It is tied to your restaurants and car dealerships – the stretch of agriculture, especially when you get in the more rural areas, is significant. So, when it comes to the state of agriculture, it impacts our state as a whole,” Harper emphasized.
According to the commissioner, the importance of agriculture and rural Georgia is not always recognized by metropolitan areas because they do not understand or see impacts of situations like hurricanes in these rural communities.
“It’s up to us to tell that story and ensure that everyone understands the role of agriculture across our state,” Harper told the audience. “Rural Georgia depends on urban Georgia and urban Georgia depends on rural Georgia. We can’t be the number one state [in the nation] for business if the number one industry in the state is not successful.” Harper recounted the state’s rich history of excellence in agriculture, as he shared that the Georgia Department of Agriculture was celebrating its 150th year of existence. “We were the nation’s first state department of agriculture,” he informed. “When the department was established in 1874, it actually was a tie vote in the house.” The Speaker of the House casted the tie breaking vote. “Why was it contentious? I like to think that one of the reasons why is because in 1874, a majority of the general assembly was made up of farmers. Well, just like a typical farmer, they were probably like, ‘I don’t need a department to tell me how to farm.’ That’s the typical mindset of a farmer, and I think that was probably the conversation. But the department was specifically created because out of the Civil War, we saw significant degradation in yields and saw some issues in soils. The Department was created to solve those issues. So, for years, the Department has worked with the universities and others to try to ensure that our farmers and farm families could be successful. But at the same time, we have a responsibility to consumers, too, through grocery stores and gas stations and doing things that most people have no clue we have anything to do with.”
He added, “We work to protect agriculture. We work to protect our brands.”
The commissioner then addressed his concerns regarding the industry. “When you look at agriculture and where we’re at and what’s going on, I’m really concerned about the state of agriculture. We’re in a really tough spot. Right now, the net farm income is expected to decline by almost 45% by the end of this year just in the last two years. When you look at our agriculture trade deficits, we are at the largest we have ever seen – it is over $30 billion. We are importing more food than we are growing for ourselves which means America is becoming more dependent on someone else to grow their food for them,” he said.
Many of these challenges are a result of inflation and the lack of increase in commodity prices, according to Harper.
“I’m significantly concerned at where we are as a nation. American agriculture is national security – a nation that cannot feed themselves cannot sustain themselves,” Harper emphasized. “I don’t want to become a nation that depends on others to provide our food supply for us because we can do that here. We have the ability to do that; the issue is that we have become a nation that does not allow the industry the ability to succeed like it should. We’ve been dealing with a lot of issues in the agriculture economy.”
He informed the audience of several other issues plaguing Georgia agriculture, including a lack of operating capital for farm families, the absence of a farm bill in legislation, and now, the destruction of a category two hurricane.
“There have been almost catastrophic losses in every commodity that we grow in Georgia,” Harper remarked. “You add a hurricane on top of a stressed economy, it puts the state of our agriculture industry at significant risk.”
Harper told the audience that he was hopeful that some relief would be coming soon, as he was enthusiastic that a national agriculture relief package would be passed through legislation within the coming months. He has been working with agricultural leaders across the southeast to advocate for help for farmers.
“We have a lot of work to do and we are committed to get it done,” he reassured.
Following Harper’s address, local farmer Chris Hopkins shared his perspective on the impacts that the past year had on agriculture, and spoke of his concern for the future of the industry.
He began by explaining how inflation had raised the price of everything in agriculture, except for commodity prices. “The average price for cotton was $0.67 was the national average closing cost of cotton in 1998. Last night, the closing cost was $0.69. How have we done it? We’ve done it with yield. The economy is a scale – we got bigger, we became more efficient, and we increased our yield. We’ve plateaued those yields, and those yield increases are so minor,” Hopkins said.
He continued, “In 1998, if you had made 170 bushels of irrigated corn yield, you had done something; today, you have to make 230 bushels or we are in trouble. It’s the same for onions, it’s the same for pecans, and it’s the same for sweet corn.”
The farmer told the audience that on top of these difficulties with yields and commodity prices, the weather had wreaked havoc on agriculture within the area.
This summer, crops struggled through 35 days of no rain before receiving 12 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. “We went 35 days with 100 degree temperatures and no rain. What does that do to yield? It doesn’t matter what it is – it decreases the yield. So, we knew we were in trouble,” Hopkins recounted. “We prayed for relief, we begged for relief, and we got it – but guess how we got it? 12 inches of rain. 12 inches of rain on freshly seeded collards, or a fall sweet corn crop, or a peanut crop that’s standing under water for two weeks was not what we needed for our yields. It was tough, but we managed through it.”
A few months later, Hurricane Helene obliterated the area, causing unimaginable loss for farmers. “On September 26, our whole world flipped upside down. Everything that we thought we were going to make and do his year, somehow flipped upside down. We woke up that morning on September 27 – actually, we didn’t wake up. We didn’t go to bed,” he said. “I went out there with a spotlight and told my wife, ‘Don’t go out there. You don’t want to see it. You don’t want to see what it looks like.’” Hopkins continued, “When I woke up that morning, I knew we were in trouble. We were in big, big trouble. As we got out and got on our gator because we couldn’t drive our vehicles, and we saw our center pivot irrigation flipped upside down, grain storing facilities blown off the concrete slab, and packing shed roofs ripped apart, it really set in. Our concerns and worries of the 35 days of no rain in June all of the sudden were washed away from our memory. It didn’t matter anymore.”
The farmer said that he saw 30 to 50 year-old timber tracts completely torn down and pecan orchards decimated. “We saw a 100 year old pecan orchard that was leveled in 2 hours,” he emphasized.
“Our priorities changed. We realized all of the sudden that Georgia agriculture is in a big crisis; we are in a big situation,” Hopkins remarked. “This may be biblical – we went without rain for 40 days and 40 nights after that. It was a wonderful opportunity to put up fences, to put roofs back on packing sheds. We went and picked 900 acres of peanuts without a drop of rain on a single acre – we had not seen anything like that.”
Yet, the large rainfall also caused issues within the area, just as it had done months before. “It is like one extreme to another. Agriculture is dependant on Mother Nature, and Mother Nature never takes a day off. We are constantly struggling and fighting that battle with Mother Nature,” he added.
Hopkins said that though crop insurance would help mitigate some of the financial loss from these events, nothing could help to ensure that struggle would not continue but divine intervention.
“Nothing will replace yield. We have lost that yield, and that’s why something has to happen soon because our rural community and rural economy depends on the yield we make to keep the cycle going,” he commented. “You don’t just go in and replant acres of timber or 80–100-yearold pecan trees. And the financial effect from those trees doesn’t just get fixed in a day.”
“Agriculture isn’t broken; it’s bent, and sometimes a bend is worse than a break,” Hopkins stressed. “From drought, to excessive rains, to a hurricane, and now unprecedented flooding, we've been through more than we ever thought we'd see in a few months time. The only thing I know that we can do is pray. We farmers need prayer right now like we’ve never needed it before. I believe it’s the only way we will survive.”
