Welcome to Carolina Journal Online’s Friday Interview. Today the John Locke Foundation’s Donna Martinez discusses North Carolina agriculture with N.C. Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten. The interview aired on Carolina Journal Radio (click here to find the station near you).
Martinez: Larry, could you first assess for us the state of the farming industry in North Carolina? We have heard a lot about the recent tobacco buyout — tobacco being one element of the agriculture industry here. But how would you assess things in general?
Wooten: Well, generally, agriculture is still very good in North Carolina. It is the largest industry in the state. About 20 percent of the jobs owe their creation to agriculture and agribusiness in North Carolina. It is our state’s number one industry. It is a changing industry — North Carolina is the third most diversified state in the nation agriculturally. And, it is still crucial to the economy, not only of North Carolina, but our communities all over the state, particularly our rural communities.
Martinez: What about the tobacco buyout? Do we have tobacco farmers that are just getting out of the industry altogether? Or, are they transitioning to other products?
Wooten: Well, we have many farmers — particularly older, middle-aged, older farmers — that have just made a conscious decision to exit the tobacco business. Some may exit agriculture entirely. Many are diversifying into other agricultural operations — either value added or commodity specific. So it depends. It depends on where you are. We have many flue-cured farmers now that are also experimenting and looking at growing burley tobacco, particularly in Piedmont North Carolina. So tobacco is still an important part of the agricultural economy of North Carolina. It is going to be grown by fewer farmers, probably on a larger farming operation. But it is still there. What we are telling our tobacco producers and our farmers is to look at your cost of production very carefully now that we no longer have the federal price support program. Watch your cost of production and for goodness sakes, don’t invest your buyout money back into subsidizing your production of tobacco.
Martinez: You know, Larry, sometimes I think that people don’t realize the depth and breadth of the agriculture industry in this state. Can you give us some examples of the different foods and products that are actually grown here?
Wooten: Oh, we grow everything from apples to zucchini — Christmas trees. Probably one thing that people fail to understand is, a big part of the agricultural economy now is a green industry in North Carolina. It is shrubs and cut flowers and all of those are a part — a big part — of the agricultural industry in North Carolina. We all have known for years that we grow cotton, and we are the largest in turkeys, and we grow broilers and hogs and all those other basic commodities, but we are diversifying into a lot of other industries — agriculture industries that traditionally may not have been considered mainline agriculture.
Martinez: One issue facing this industry that I have been reading about recently, and it really got my attention, has to do with the aging farmer. I hadn’t really thought about this but when you do, it makes sense that there are a lot of folks who have been farming for years, but with all of the new opportunities for younger people, they may have family members who choose not to take over the family farm. What would happen if those family farms just disappeared?
Wooten: Well, it would be a tragedy for the family farm to just completely disappear as a part of the rural economy. North Carolina is losing farmland at faster than the national rate. There are several initiatives to preserve farmland. We have been involved with many of these efforts at North Carolina Farm Bureau. We are working with the Commissioner of Agriculture, the Department of Agriculture, in terms of how we can preserve farmland. But farmers are aging, and with North Carolina being such a fast-growing state, people want to come to North Carolina. Our population, as you well know, is certainly increasing very fast. I saw a report the other day where, in the next 10 years, our population in North Carolina is going to increase by 50 percent. Does that have an impact on agriculture and put pressure on farmland and our farmers? You bet it does.
Martinez: You have a specific program, as I understand it, to help address this issue of aging farmers who are looking at retiring and who don’t have a family member who will take over the business. How does this program work — the North Carolina Farm Transition?
Wooten: In 2003 we convened at North Carolina Farm Bureau a group of stakeholders who were concerned about, not only farmland preservation, but young framers entering the profession. How do older farmers transfer their wealth, their farms, their land, into farming — continuing farming operations. And a group of us sat down and began to talk about this. There was a national effort called the Farm Transition Network and in 2004 — late 2003 or early 2004 — we established the North Carolina Farm Transition Network. We hired an executive director, Andrew Brannon, who is doing a wonderful job in moving around the state explaining the very issues that you and I are talking about today in terms of the age of farmers — how do you pass the land on? Obviously, you can introduce this concept to a large number of people through the media. You can explain it to smaller groups, but to really implement this idea of passing land from one generation to another — continuing farming operations — it has to be done family by family, farm by farm. In addition, our next generation of farmers, many of them, Donna, may not come from the traditional farming families. They could never have grown up on a farm, but we need to figure a way to get them involved, maybe as apprentices with farmers that want their farmland to continue, their farming operation to continue, and for good people to succeed them.
Martinez: Now, is that the Young Farmers and Ranchers program that you are referring to in that case?
Wooten: No, the Young Farmers and Rancher program at North Carolina Farm Bureau is a leadership development program that we implemented many years ago. I am a product of the Young Farmer and Rancher program through the North Carolina Farm Bureau. That is how I became involved in the organization. That is a leadership development program for young farmers and ranchers in North Carolina through the Farm Bureau. But we work very closely with those young people in looking at generational aspects of farming, becoming involved in farming, the cost of becoming involved. As I said, with the population growth, the price of farmland continues to escalate. If a farm comes up for sale, for a young farmer to stand to there with a developer is absurd. He doesn’t have the financial resources to compete with that developer, particularly if that farm is in one of the counties that is closely surrounding our growing metropolitan areas.
Martinez: How are you recruiting young folks who, as you said, might not have any direct experience or knowledge of farming, but who have an interest? Do you work with, for example, the community college system? How do you actually recruit?
Wooten: Well, Andrew is moving across the state now, explaining this program, and we are introducing not only the community college program but the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University, the College of Agriculture and Economic Resources at A&T State University, and through our farm groups all across the state…we are explaining this concept that you don’t necessarily have to just put your farm, your land, in a farm trust. There are other alternatives and it is a multi-faceted approach to the whole idea of farmland preservation, continuing farming operations, preserving farmlands. It is a good concept.
Martinez: As this industry changes, one issue that seems to be coming up the list of priorities has to do with homeland security in a post-9/11 world. We have issues, questions over food safety. Has this opened up, really, a whole new area for farmers to be concerned about and to need knowledge and education about? Or, have they always been concerned about it and we [the public] just didn’t think about it?
Wooten: Well, it is an issue that we have always [had] in the back of our minds. Our farmers have thought about food safety and what you do when you are farming — entry into farms from disease control more than bioterrorist control, or bioterrorist activity now. But certainly in the last few years, certainly since 9/11, there has been heightened awareness of the possibility of bioterrorism as it pertains to agriculture and our food supply. Drinking water, livestock, dairies. There is a heightened awareness and there are efforts that are going on through the government, through the state Department of Agriculture and others about what some of those activities may be, and how we can ward against those.