By Kent Leonhardt, West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture
This year, the Department has several pieces of legislation moving through the House and Senate, including the Truth in Labeling Act. This bill would require your food to be labeled to say exactly what it is, while keeping the high standards we already have. It provides an additional step to ensure consumers know exactly what they are purchasing.
We also have pieces of last year’s Farm Bill that didn’t pass that we’ve introduced as smaller bills. One of those is a land transfer bill, to ensure that we are always making the best use of the land we have here at the Department.
Another piece of legislation we are very proud to be introducing is a Foreign Lands bill. After our version did not pass last year, we knew we must try again this year to act against foreign ownership of land. Specifically, our bill targets the inappropriate ownership of agricultural lands by citing President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order regarding certain known enemy countries of the United States.
Some around the Capitol are even calling the bill “the one-sentence wonder.” Although it is only one sentence in length, it takes a crucial step towards bringing West Virginia in line with the rest of the country in protecting agricultural lands. Otherwise, West Virginia stands with states losing prime agricultural lands to bad actors and known foreign enemies of the United States, at a rather high rate. We remain hopeful that this year’s bill will pass. We want to ensure our beautiful state maintains its prime farmland and the ownership of such land can be kept safe.
We also introduced a budget proposal to fund the WV Grown program and our new educational initiative with West Virginia University and West Virginia State University for veterinary technicians. That initiative is called “VetStart,” and we have worked very hard to ensure the program receives the necessary funding. Right now, we have a huge discrepancy in the ratio of veterinarians to veterinary technicians in this state. There’s an even bigger divide in parts of rural West Virginia.
The VetStart program is more cost efficient than building a veterinary school in West Virginia, and it is ready to hit the ground running. With our well-qualified employees at the Department, the WVDA would serve a critical role for the “in-field” education component of the program. I mentioned above a request for more money for the WV Grown program. We have made this request several years in a row and have yet to receive those monies in the budget. Members of my staff made a presentation on this and other needs during interims, including funding for the Farm Museum.
I am hopeful lawmakers, after getting to see and learn more about these programs, will choose to fund these worthy causes. Finally, the other legislation we have introduced this year includes a “clean-up” version of the hemp and kratom bill that first passed last year. While the bill makes no substantive changes to the law, its functionality should be greatly improved with the clean-up version, should it pass.
As I write this, “cross-over” week is in full swing, and we will know what might have a better chance of passage after that. We will keep you up to date in future Market Bulletins on the final outcomes of this year’s legislative session. We do hope, as always, for the best outcome for agriculture in West Virginia.