Tifton, GA |
Georgia Farm Bureau’s policy priorities took shape in Tifton recently at the organization’s annual commodity conference — a crucial step in the policy development process that gives commodity leaders a direct line to GFB’s advocacy work at the state and federal level.
“The policy development process we do here with our commodity advisory committees is important for our organization because it allows leaders from various commodity industries and growers from around the state to get together and talk through some of the more complex issues around their commodities,” said Raynor Churwell, Agricultural Programs Manager for GFB. “Our committees here today will develop and amend policy to set the roadmap for the organization and allow our advocacy specialists and legislative staff to go forth and work on those issues with our elected officials.”
Beyond policy development, producers also heard from outside experts on pressing issues facing the agricultural industry. One of the most timely: agricultural data — specifically who owns it, who can access it, and how farmers can protect themselves as technology becomes more deeply embedded in everyday farm operations.
“The main issues farmers need to be aware of relate to the privacy and security of their data. They need to make sure they understand how the data is going to be used and who would have access to it, to ensure that any privacy concerns they have are going to be protected,” said Ross Pifer, Professor of Law at Penn State.
Pifer says the stakes will only grow as precision agriculture tools become more widespread — and warns that the legal landscape hasn’t kept pace.
“In order for farmers to take advantage of all of the technological advances available, they’re generating and providing data to others. You want to take advantage of the technology, but you need to be aware that there are potential risks. And at this point, there aren’t a lot of legal frameworks that have been established to provide that protection,” Pifer said.
Attendees also received an update on one of the hardest-hit sectors in Georgia agriculture in recent years: forestry. Between hurricanes, mill closures, wildfires, and pine beetle pressure, the industry has been under sustained stress — and the root cause, according to the Georgia Forestry Commission, comes down to market access for small-diameter wood.
“The biggest issue we’re having right now in forestry is markets for small-diameter wood and what we call residual — like sawmill shavings from sawmills,” said Johnny Sabo, Director of the Georgia Forestry Commission. “We know about 8.2 million tons of wood came off the market between the early county mill closures and then the mills in Savannah and Riceborough. Of that 8.2 million, about 4.2 million tons were wood in Georgia. So we lost about 4.2 million tons of capacity going into mills.”
Sabo says finding replacement markets for that lost volume is now the central challenge for the entire forestry sector.
“If we can’t move small-diameter wood, we start having southern pine beetle issues. We lose the ability to grow saw timber. It’s really the center of the wheel that makes everything go around for forestry,” he said.
For GFB and its commodity partners, the Tifton conference was a reminder that the policy work happening in meeting rooms often has direct consequences in the field — and that the connections built here are what make that advocacy possible.