By Stephen Smoot
Last week, during the annual meeting of the West Virginia Poultry Association, Government Affairs director Dwayne O’Dell provided an update on different actions of the state and federal government related closely to the interests of agriculture.
He started with mentioning a 78 page report from Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Though not always based on what O’Dell called “sound science,” it contains a “significant portion” that addresses use of pesticides. He also speculated that little of its presentation on that subject could be applied on a widespread basis.
Next, he turned to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” recently passed by the United States Congress and backed by President Donald Trump. It preserved the $15 million floor on estate taxes set by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This helps to preserve moderate to large scale family-run farming operations as they pass from one generation to the next.
“This will benefit agriculture down the road and the next generations,” he explained.
He then shared the worrisome statistic that the number of farmers under the age of 35 had fallen under 10 percent “an alarming factor to us in agriculture.” O’Dell explained that the loss of family farms when the younger generations lose interest and pass on running them grows more distressing when considering the always escalating cost of starting an operation such as a poultry house.
O’Dell then brought up the passage of recissions packages that take money back from areas to which Congress had allocated it. These included National Public Radio, USAID, and the Public Broadcasting Service. He said that “is quite a bit of money affected,” but that “when you spend $6.7 trillion a year and bring in $4.5 trillion a year, something has to give.”
He went on to explain the mammoth expansion of state government since 2015, which covers the end of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s tenure and Governor Jim Justice’s entire administration. In that time period, State of West Virginia spending increased from $2.2 billion to $5.3 billion.
O’Dell discussed Governor Patrick Morrisey’s backing of West Virginia-based data centers with “their own generational capability” using microgrids. “This could help coal, help oil and gas, but there’s a number of folks opposed.”
He then criticized “folks who move into places like West Virginia who like to see the green grass, like to see the cows, but don’t want these other things to come in.”
One important change that he mentioned came in changes to the governance of the land grant institutions West Virginia University and West Virginia State University. Both have in the past produced the perception that they gave neither rural areas nor farmers “a fair shake.” Now representation from agriculture will join the Board of Governors of both schools.
Another bill from the West Virginia State Legislature provided relief in some areas for Future Farmers of America and 4H students. O’Dell shared that some students in different county school systems attended schools where principals marked students absent, as opposed to recognizing an individual learning day, when they attended competitions and events or even went on college tours.
Legislators passed an act requiring schools to give up to 10 days of approved absences for these types of trips. O’Dell noted that many of these trips provided more education and skills development than most average days attending school.
