Tifton |
Long before she became one of the Georgia legislature’s most respected voices on agriculture and natural resources, Lynn Smith was a kid growing up in Florida with a love for the outdoors — and a habit of going out to dig and grow things whenever life got hard. That instinct, it turns out, was a preview of a career defined by a deep belief in the balance between people, the land, and the resources that sustain both.
This year, that career earned her Georgia Farm Bureau’s 2026 Commodity Award — recognition for decades of advocacy and stewardship that left a mark on Georgia’s water policy, agricultural legislation, and the communities that depend on both.
“She’s very protective of our natural resources — our water, our coastline, and all the things that make Georgia great. But she also wants to take private property rights into consideration. It’s a real balance to how Chairman Smith has approached every issue that has come across her committee,” said Robert Dickey, Chairman of the Georgia House Agriculture Committee.
Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns echoed that sentiment, describing Smith as someone who could always be counted on when conversations got difficult.
“Lynn has always been one of those people you could count on when the chips were down and the conversation got very difficult — she was willing to stand her ground and ensure she still took the opportunity to protect what she knew was important,” Burns said. “That was people, their livelihoods, but with a main focus on balancing the interests of people — how we make a living and how we provide for others — while also protecting this great Earth and these resources that we have been given.”
Much of Smith’s legacy is rooted in Georgia’s long-running water policy battles — a contentious multi-decade fight that pit regions of the state against each other over one of the state’s most essential and contested resources.
“We were the four people who were steady throughout the water wars — Tom McCall, Bob Hanner, Richard Royal, and myself,” Smith said. “Water doesn’t know its boundaries. And the piece of legislation I am most relieved passed — it didn’t happen until 2008 — was the resolution that meant we could go forward with all the decisions we had been working up to. It was the bridge that gave our state agencies the tools they needed.”
That legislation — helping create the framework for the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District — represented years of patient, often contentious work. For Smith, it was the payoff for refusing to treat a shared problem as a territorial battle.
“Think of cowboys and Indians — nobody was going to let go of what they had,” she said. “My point is, we needed to start solving problems. I put my heart into what I did, and I was a problem solver as opposed to a problem creator.”
For GFB President Tom McCall, what made Smith so effective as an agriculture advocate was precisely that she came from outside the farming world — yet chose to go to bat for it anyway.
“Lynn understands that you eat three times a day, you wear clothes, and you live in a house made out of two-by-fours. That’s the importance of agriculture and forestry in this state,” McCall said. “Anybody that maybe has a different perspective or was raised differently than all of us — and will still go to bat like Lynn did for agriculture — is going to be missed.”
For Smith, the award is a reflection of the people she served alongside as much as the work itself — legislators, advocates, and farmers who believed, like she did, that the right people at the right time could find a way to move forward together.