Hagan Stumps for Small Farms
Anticipating the coming debate over federal food safety reform, U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan used a Kings Mountain blackberry farm Monday as a stage on which to highlight her efforts to protect family farms from burdensome regulations.
Everyone in attendance agreed that new legislation, if passed, should not burden small farms with additional red tape. The definition of “small,” however, remains unclear.
Last summer, the House passed the Food Safety Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration more authority to regulate farms and food facilities. With the health care and financial reform votes now over, Hagan expects that the food safety overhaul will be next on the Senate’s agenda.
“Right now we’re looking at about another three weeks,” she said.
Hagan is cosponsoring two amendments to the Senate version. One of them, which would exempt family operations from new performance and record-keeping requirements, is now being rewritten.
“We had started out having it by a dollar amount,” Hagan explained. “It was $500,000 [in gross income] but now it’s being looked at [by] the metric … like how many bushels of peaches that they would sell.”
Focusing on the metric of production will make it easier to isolate smaller-scale operations, explained the senator.
“A lot of it would be [for farms] like [those] in the Asheville area – they have all the small farmers in the farmers markets and things like that,” said Hagan. “To be sure that those local farmers markets where you buy and you know the farmer, that they’re not impacted by an incredible amount of record keeping that they don’t have the extra staff to handle.”
Hagan said she and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the amendment’s cosponsor, will be releasing the new metric-based exemption requirements soon.
The Kings Mountain farm the senator visited would possibly qualify for that exemption, but not the one for producers that primarily sell directly to consumers and restaurants.
Killdeer Farm sells its blackberries and muscadine grapes through a distributor to retailers throughout the East Coast and Canada, including Publix and Walmart. It does not sell any of its crops to the public.
Farm owners Ervin and Debbie Lineberger sell a variety of fruits and vegetables on the farm but “were forced to close their market because they lacked the manpower to navigate government regulations,” according to the press release from Sen. Hagan’s office.
After leading the senator through a tour of his farm on Monday morning, however, Ervin Lineberger clarified that his shift to wholesale-only production was voluntary.
Hagan – who was born in Shelby, N.C., but grew up in Lakeland, Fla. – came in contact with the Kings Mountain growers through the Farm Bureau, explained Lineberger.
“I’m a Farm Bureau member, and we’re all after the same thing,” he said. “We want a good, safe product.”
Lineberger then turned to Hagan.
“We hope that the bill you have is going to help us with that,” he said. “Because Global G.A.P. sometimes goes too far, because they want to sell to Europeans and Canadians.”
Global G.A.P. is a voluntary membership organization that certifies Good Agricultural Practices, or G.A.P.
It was in fact these voluntary G.A.P. standards that led the Linebergers to close the market, explained a Hagan spokeswoman.
“It sounds like Mr. Lineberger did voluntarily close his market,” said Press Secretary Sadie Weiner. “But as we understand it, it was because the G.A.P. standards were difficult to keep up with.”
Roland McReynolds, executive director of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, which represents family farms in North and South Carolina, said he was not aware of the shift toward metric rather than dollar requirements, but his group supports it.
“What it really boils down to is the market being sold to,” said McReynolds. “The folks focusing to serving local markets, restaurants, hospitals, institutions – those are the producers who will need extra protection.”
McReynolds added that the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association has been working closely with Hagan’s office to ensure that the food safety overhaul does not negatively impact small farms.
“It’s another thing I did during the whole health care debate,” said Hagan on Monday morning. “I did an amendment to help farmers with fewer than – typically it’s a 50-employee threshold.”
About 60 people are employed at Killdeer Farm. Since the vast majority of which are seasonal workers who work less than 120 days, Killdeer would benefit from the provision.
