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Local farmers air election concerns at annual tour
(The Blairsville Dispatch Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 15--INDIANA -- A number of Indiana County Farm Bureau members gathered at Kencove Farm Fence Supplies last Thursday for the Farm Bureau's annual legislative tour, a means to voice their concerns to the elected county and state government officials who attended.
The top challenges facing those in the agriculture industry, according to the Farm Bureau, are seasonal labor, or "guest workers," the rights of coal bed methane gas, the Clean Water Restoration Act, and local property taxes.
To give an idea of what the industry is facing, and to clear up a few misconceptions people may have about farmers, Ray Sleppy, Indiana County Farm Bureau president, started off the program by presenting a few statistics.
According to the Farm Bureau, the percentage of the consumers' food dollar that went to the farmers is down from 33 percent in 1975, to 19 percent in 2007.
Where pesticide use is concerned, homeowners actually use a greater concentration of chemical pesticides per acre than farmers. The average homeowner uses eight times as much.
In regards to operation, non-family corporations produce only 6 percent of the nation's food and fiber.
"There's a misconception that all agriculture is being turned over to the large corporations, and that is false," Sleppy noted. "Only 6 percent of the food and fiber produced in this country is produced by large corporate farms that are not family-owned."
For those who believe that too much of the state budget is being used for agriculture, Sleppy pointed out that less than half of one percent of the federal budget is spent on farm programs, which could pose a problem for the country's future food production.
According to the United Nations Population Reference Bureau, by 2050, the United States population will climb from 6.5 billion to 11 billion people.
"We will need to feed almost twice as many people," Sleppy said. "We will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years that has been produced in all of history. To accomplish this, we need a public that understands food and fiber systems, it needs to make decisions on accurate research, not rumors or innuendoes."
Coal bed methane gas started off the list of industry concerns, and Sleppy offered his opinion that the laws concerning this issue were written at a time when information wasn't completely clear, or when all of the facts weren't yet available.
The law states that the methane gas in coal belongs to whoever owns the coal.
"Gas is coal, coal is gas," Sleppy pointed out. "It was a law that was probably a bad law at the time it was written. But it's a law that's on the books, it's a law we have to deal with."
Sen. Don White, R-Indiana, has stepped up to the plate on behalf of the farmers, said Sleppy. White is sponsoring a Senate bill that addresses the definition of the property rights when it comes to coal bed methane gas.
The legislation would help to resolve issues related to the location of coal bed methane wells, well lines, access roads and pumps. It would also provide better options to landowners in regards to court litigation disputing those issues.
One area where Sleppy said the Farm Bureau would like to see an improvement in legislation regarding coal bed methane gas is the definition of "gob gas," or gas that remains underground once coal has been extracted. They believe that once the coal is removed, the remaining "gob gas," which would include methane gas, should become the property of the landowners.
Dave Kimmel, a director of the Farm Bureau director, next spoke on immigration reform, and a need for change to allow seasonal immigrant workers to enter the country to help during the harvest season.
"Pennsylvania needs a viable and legal agriculture worker program," Kimmel stated. "The labor-intensive fruit, vegetable, mushroom and dairy operation will suffer great losses without a supply of reliable workers."
There are a number of jobs in agriculture that require seasonal immigrant laborers, work which Kimmel noted many U.S. workers aren't willing to perform.
The fruit and vegetable farmers in the state may face production losses up to $175 million annually without thee "guest workers" to help them tend to the harvests, according to Farm Bureau statistics.
"Consumers who enjoy the safest, most abundant and affordable food supply in the world don't want to trade those benefits for importation of food from countries with lower quality and safety standards," Kimmel remarked.
And with the growing demand of of fresh-grown fruits and vegetables by American consumers, many local farmers have come to depend on legal immigrant workers during harvest season.
The Farm Bureau stance is to oppose any amnesty for those who enter the country illegally, but it does support the Emergency Agriculture Relief Act proposed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
The proposed act is a temporary proposal that grants legal working status for a large portion of the agricultural workforce.
Kimmel stressed that the act, "does not provide citizenship, nor does it provide a path to citizenship to workers currently in the U.S. without authorization."
All provisions of the Feinstein plan would expire within five years of its passage.
When Sleppy asked the attending county commissioners if they had seen any type of legislation that would impact this issue, Commissioner Rodney Ruddick introduced Stan Caldwell, executive director of U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter's Pittsburgh regional office.
"Right now, we see nothing happening in the Senate, we expect nothing to occur in the Senate, especially with immigration," Caldwell acknowledged. "Sen. Specter was supportive of immigration reform last summer, and that's when this issue was really on the front burner, but the negative reaction to immigration reform and amnesty has really soured any debate, any discussion, any action on immigration reform."
Caldwell said his office hears many concerns on this issue from not only farmers, but also landscapers and others industries that require manual or seasonal labor.
"But frankly, the indication we're getting from the Senate and Washington, in the House as well, is that since there was so much negative reaction to amnesty from the general public last year, we don't see anything moving forward that has to do with immigration," he stated.
He added that the stance might change after this year's presidential election.
"We're just as frustrated as everybody else, but that's just the political reality of what we're seeing in Washington," Caldwell remarked.
Sleppy asked Caldwell to relay any advice on a similar matter that has some farmers confused, and that is how to make heads or tails of the immigrant labor laws in place.
"Some of the concerns that we're hearing from our larger farmers who use immigrant labor is the concerns over the laws and how to understand them, and that they can be held liable for these people who come in illegally," said Sleppy. "So farmers expressed their concern that they need to be better trained on these laws."
Caldwell noted that there is a bill proposal supporting a new system that would help farmers investigate the legality of potential hired laborers. It's similar to the system used to purchase firearms, he said, where the burden of proof is placed on the government, "So that as long as you do your due diligence as an employer, as a farmer, and you call up the system and say, 'Is this person legal?' and the system comes back and says, 'Yes, that person is legal, it's OK,' then you're covered."
Caldwell noted that the system does boast a significant cost but the bill to implement this program is pending in Congress and Sen. Specter is supporting the bill.
Wrapping up the issue, Sleppy remarked that the Farm Bureau agrees to the "high walls, wide gate theory, where we want them in, but we want to know who they are, they need to come through legally and be registered so that they can be used as employees, but they need to pay their fair share."
Another matter brought up in discussion was House Bill 2421 and the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007. The Farm Bureau does not agree with a recent suggestion to remove the word "navigable" from the bill, addressing pollution issues in smaller waterways and standing waters.
Rep. Dave Reed addressed the matter, explaining both sides of the issue.
"There's a lot of debate on both sides," he said. "Of course, the environmentalists are trying to push it as far wide as possible to cover just about everything. On the other side, they realize that maybe we have to go beyond navigable, so how do you get it to the reasonable point of regular flowing waterways as opposed to intermittent streams or an intermittent pond.
"Everyone realizes that totally taking out 'navigable' does not leave a reasonable interpretation. If they do, there's going to need to be new terminology to make sure that it can't be totally overreaching, especially in intermittent waters."
Some people may not understand the expressed need for change, but Reed said that due to the abundant and successful work done on the nation's larger waterways in the past few decades years, attention is being turned to the smaller bodies of water that may be contributing to water pollution.
"It's the issue of trying to identify more non-point pollution sources," Reed said. "They have to look at some of these smaller streams and some of the affects from these smaller waterways. But again, how do you clearly define how to control these? That's the controversial point. People are very concerned about it."
Reed noted that the success of the Clean Water Act has removed about 80 percent of the water quality issues in the United States, most of which was caused by direct point source pollution.
"Now that it's been 20, 25 years, they believe that the next step has to be updated in order to address the 20 percent of pollution that's left," he explained. "And again, this is more what they consider non-point source pollution, where they can't exactly say where it's coming from, the things like the acid mine drainage, some of these other issues where they can't actually say, 'This is the point where it's coming from.'"
He ended the discussion by noting that officials understand the landowners' concerns of having small bodies of water on their land regulated. "Everyone realizes that that's too extreme," he emphasized. "We'll be keeping our eye on it."
Property taxation was the final issue brought before legislators at the Farm Bureau Tour.
The Farm Bureau is supportive of any proposed legislation that would help eliminate school property tax in Pennsylvania, whether it be through earned income tax or wage tax hikes or expanded sales tax.
The implementation of Act 1 of 2002 to reduce property taxation not provide farmers and other property owners with meaningful tax relief, Sleppy said.
"I think what we're seeing is those tax reductions are offset by actual increases in other taxes that come along," he noted.
He pointed out that farm owners pay a large brunt of the local property taxes to the school districts.
According to Ruddick, about 70 to 75 percent of the local tax effort goes to the school districts, while the remainder is split almost evenly between the municipalities and county.
"I think the state is doing an aggressive job trying to address the tax fairness rule," he said, and added that he and the other commissioners had just returned from a County Commissioners Association conference in which tax fairness in county government was a topic of first priority.
"Tax fairness is something that has to come out of a combination of real estate tax, income tax and sales tax," he pointed out. "But I think we're going to have to agree that most likely, real estate tax will not go away in its entirety."
Elevating the tax base requirement in Indiana County would only force residents to travel to neighboring counties to make purchases.
"And we don't want that to happen," Ruddick stated.
He said that the commissioners would not take any action on the issue until a ruling is made by the Common Pleas Court of Allegheny County, on whether the current real estate taxation is fair.
"The Commonwealth Court is going to hear that case very soon, and determine whether we will continue with the same base structure we have or go to a new concept," he said. "We're not going to do anything until we know what's being done with that decision.
"We tend to agree very strongly (with the Farm Bureau). But taxes are here. It's the only form that we can help the municipalities that do our business, but we want to be fair about it."
Rep. Reed agreed that the issue of fair taxation is a problem in Pennsylvania, but noted tax reassessment, especially in rural communities, would come at a significant cost.
He would like to see the state consider adoption of a policy similar to what California uses, where property is reassessed only when it changes hands.
Rep. Reed also encouraged county residents concerned about the issue of property taxes to address not the state or local government, but the school districts.
"Ironically, when you look at this issue, everybody comes to the state or the county to solve the local property tax issue," he said. "We don't have the authority to raise or to decrease local school property tax. That's the local school boards. Far too few folks pay attention to local school board races. These are the folks who are dictating how much the schools are spending.
"At some point, it does come down to spending at a reasonable level. And if you want your school board to spend at a reasonable level, it comes down to electing school board members and holding them accountable for the actions they take."
In closing Caldwell spoke to the Farm Bureau members, not as a representative of Sen. Specter's office, but as an urban consumer.
He said he and his wife use a weekly farm delivery and frequent the weekly farmers' market in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bloomfield.
"I wanted to highlight the fact that there's a lot of the people in the city looking for those options," he said. "So I just want to encourage you guys, as an industry. There is a big market for it, and it's a higher-priced, higher demand market that's looking for local produce and local product. encourage you guys to find these outlets locally."
Kencove Farm Fence Supply is owned by Charles Kendall and run by general manager John McConnell. The company offers a variety of materials and equipment for high-tensile fencing. Kendall was a dairy farmer before he founded Kencove in the late 1970s.
An estimated 40 employees are employed by the company.
Gina Delfavero can be reached at gdelfavero@tribweb.com or .
To see more of The Blairsville Dispatch or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/blairsvilledispatch/.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Blairsville Dispatch, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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