By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A bill introduced in the 2011 Kentucky General Assembly that would modify the State Board of Agriculture (SBA) has drawn fire from at least one farm group much to the surprise of the bill’s sponsor and supporters.
House Bill (HB) 205 would change the makeup of the board including the number of which a sitting governor can appoint.

Rep. Tom McKee (D-Cynthiana, Ky.) chairs the House Standing Committee on Agriculture and Small Business and co-chairs the Interim Joint Committee on Agriculture and introduced the legislation during the first week of the session.
The General Assembly then recessed for three weeks and upon their return, McKee heard the bill during the first meeting of the agriculture committee. He said the new bill would create a board more representative of the way agriculture has changed through the years.

“We felt like we needed to be a little more specific and make sure that all of agriculture was represented,” said McKee. “Why the bill didn’t attract any interest until it passed out of committee, I don’t know but there are a lot of rumors and a lot of falsehoods that are out there about what the bill would or would not do and that’s unfortunate.”

The Community Farm Alliance (CFA) is strongly opposing the bill stating it “provides no specific representation for small-scale family farms, organic farmers, or farmers making a living by selling their products through direct marketing venues.”

CFA President Tricia Houston said the bill as it stands is simply not acceptable to that organization.

“We reached out to our membership and our board of directors and looked at all aspects of the bill. It was a unanimous decision of the board that the CFA would oppose the bill for a number of reasons,” she said. “Why are we making these changes? If it’s not broken why are we fixing it?”

The organization also feels the legislation is being rushed through the process of making it law.

Additionally, the CFA doesn’t feel as though organizations should have a permanent vote on the board, including KFB.

But KFB has historically been represented on the board as past governors have regularly appointed its presidents to serve. Houston said it has been just that, a choice and not a dictation and she would prefer it remain that way.

The members of the board consist of the (state agriculture) “commissioner who shall be a voting member and serve as chairman; the director of the agricultural experiment station who shall be a voting member and serve as vice chairman; nine citizens of the Commonwealth appointed by the Governor who shall serve as voting members; the state president of the (FFA) who shall serve as a nonvoting member; the state president of the Young Farmers of America who shall serve as a non-voting member; and the state president of the 4-H Club who shall serve as a non-voting member,” all according to KRS 246.120.

Under HB 205, the board would consist of the “commissioner, or the commissioner’s designee, who shall be a voting member and serve as chairman; the director of the agricultural experiment station, or the director’s designee, who shall be a voting member and serve as vice chairman; the president of the Kentucky Farm Bureau, or the president’s designee, who shall be a voting member; one voting member appointed by the Governor from a list of three large-animal veterinarians nominated by the Kentucky Veterinary Medical Assoc.; seven voting members appointed by the Governor with assistance by the department, as follows: one each from the seven commodity-specific organizations that officially represent the agricultural commodities with the greatest cash receipts from farm (sales) as reported by the Kentucky Agricultural Statistics Service by Dec. 1 for the previous calendar year; the state president of the (FFA) who shall serve as a non-voting member; the state president of the Young Farmers of America who shall serve as a non-voting member; the state president of the 4-H Club who shall serve as a nonvoting member.”

Additional bill amendments

Several amendments have been added to the bill including one that would increase the number of members to the board one being a member of the CFA.
“Respectfully, CFA does not want to be on the board and we are opposed to that. We did not ask for that and we don’t want that,” said Houston.

Similar legislation was introduced during last year’s session to work in conjunction with HB 398, which created the Livestock Care Standards Commission and was filed in an effort to make sure organizations against animal agriculture would not get a foothold in the state from a legislative standpoint.
The SBA was created in 1942 and oversees and assists the Department of Agriculture and promulgates the regulations that the department needs.
Jeff Harper, KFB director of public affairs said the landscape of agriculture has changed since then and this legislation is important to keep up with those changes. He also said the bill in no way has been rushed through the legislative process and was introduced early to allow discussion from all interested parties during the three week recess.

“You’re looking at almost a full calendar month from when the bill was filed to when it was passed out of committee,” he said. “This bill adds diversity by commodity to the SBA and does not exclude any commodity groups.”
Harper pointed out that within each agriculture sector there are a number of groups that represent those individual sectors. The amendment that seeks to increase the size of the board states that two other governor-appointed members would be added who were not connected to the seven representing the top commodities in the state; one of which would be from a livestock group and the other from a non-livestock group.

Harper said that would allow groups outside of the top seven to be included on the board including such sectors as the swine industry or horticulture.
“We believe it would broaden production agriculture representation on the board,” he said.

Both Harper and McKee acknowledge how supportive current Gov. Steve Beshear has been to agriculture, but in the event a future governor not so supportive of the ag sector were to be elected, this legislation would serve to protect the industry.

The bill is set to go to the floor of the House for a vote, but McKee said he would like to get all the questions answered first before that happens.
“We would like to know that we have an agreement between all parties concerned so we’ll probably not move too quickly with it,” he said. ‘Right now we are in an informational mode on the bill. We’d like to gather everything we can and if there are questions that remain unanswered then it may be something that we leave up there for a while for further consideration. We’re trying to get all the information we can and answer all the questions we can. I do think it would be a positive step for Kentucky agriculture.”