Wilson Daily Times: Hagan pushes farm agenda

Wilson Daily Times
Matt Shaw
August 4, 2008

Kay Hagan promised Wilson County farmers Friday afternoon that she would protect their profession and way of life if she’s elected to the U.S. Senate.

Hagan said she would work for a better immigration policy, to reduce energy costs and to ensure access to health care services in rural communities, all of which are needed by the next generation of farmers.

“I am worried about the kind of world that’s going to be handed to them,” she said. “We’ve got to send people in Washington to make the hard decisions. … We have got to do things in a different way.”

Hagan, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, spoke to about two dozen people at Sharp Farm on N.C. 581 in western Wilson County. The appearance was part of a two-day campaign swing through the eastern part of the state.

Hagan impressed many of the local growers.

“It was interesting to hear some fresh ideas,” said Susan Barnes. “I think we have to have a change.”

Kendall Hill, a Lenoir County farmer, said he’d welcome a senator who knows the state.

As for Dole, he said, “What has she done for North Carolina?”

Pender Sharp led Hagan on a tour of his tobacco facility where green leaf was being packed and placed into the drying sheds. Afterward, he said he was happy to have the Senate hopeful speak in a shelter rich with the smell of dried leaf.

“This commodity has never lost any of its importance in eastern North Carolina,” Sharp said.

Hagan, now a state senator representing Greensboro, said she was well aware of farm life. Her father grew up on a farm in Chesterfield, S.C., and Hagan spent many summers there with her grandparents, she said.

She would like to make it possible for tomorrow’s children to have such memories and be able to go into agriculture if they choose, she said.

But family farms are on the decline. Since 2003, the year Dole took office, North Carolina has lost 5,500 farms, Hagan said.

Small-town life is also under assault, she said. She has visited many towns decimated by plant closures, where the unemployment rate is more than 10 percent.

The first question posed to Hagan by farmers was her stand on immigration.

Hagan said she favors securing the border, but she said she is also aware that many industries, not just agriculture, depend on foreign workers.

Hill said there is a federal guest worker program, H-2A, that has helped his operation secure workers since the 1980s, but many people are unaware of it.

“Most congressional aides know nothing about it,” Hill said, arguing the program should be expanded.

One farmer said, “Energy costs are killing all of us who are in small business,” which drew a lot of shaking heads in agreement.

The United States is paying $17 billion a year in tax incentives to the oil companies, which are making record profits, Hagan said. She said she would revoke those incentives and invest heavily in finding alternate energy sources. That would create jobs in the short term, especially for North Carolina researchers, and eventually lessen our dependence on foreign oil, she said.

Asked her opinion on off-shore drilling, Hagan said it was such a long-term process that it would be decades before it paid off.

Farmers have been hurt as well by the Food & Drug Administration, Sharp said.

When the FDA issues warnings about food-borne diseases, it causes a backlash that greatly outweighs the potential threats, he said. Many tomato farmers faced ruin this summer over salmonella reports that ultimately had nothing to do with tomatoes.

The FDA “has a license to bankrupt every farmer in the country while they chase these things down,” he said.

He would like to see the FDA be more careful about such announcements, a point that Hagan promised to consider.

She also pledged to consider programs that would improve rural access to health care. For example, the government could forgive student loans for nurses and doctors who locate in rural areas.

For more information on Hagan’s proposals, go to www.kayhagan.com.

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