MOULTRIE – The success of farm families was Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tyler Harper’s main theme in his address at the annual Willie B. Withers Farmer of the Year Luncheon at the Sunbelt Expo last week.

“Just taking an awesome opportunity to celebrate all things that are agriculture. … Our state’s number one industry,” he said about the Sunbelt Expo.

He said that the Expo gave people in agriculture the opportunity to come together and learn how to “better ourselves, better our operations and, in turn, better agriculture to allow our nation, our state and our communities to be better for it.”

Harper said that agriculture truly was the backbone of Georgia’s economy and gives more than $83 billion economic output to the state every year. He added that agriculture was almost 17% of the state’s GDP with one in seven Georgians employed in the industry. 

He told how the Georgia and Florida Departments of Agriculture, the University of Georgia and Clemson University had worked together to combat a pest common to the states.

“The partnerships that your commissioners of agriculture have, especially in the Southeast, is phenomenal. Our friendship, our partnership, our working together. We truly do work together as a team,” Harper said.

He said that he’s been in agriculture his whole life so he’s always been part of the agriculture family. He said it was great to be in a room with leaders who were committed to ensuring that Georgia’s farm families are successful every single day.

“And we know that every day you’re fighting battles. One of those is, in agriculture, we’re asked to do more with less. We’re asked to put more beef on the hoof, more lamb on the chop. ‘We want you to put more cotton on a stalk, more corn on a stalk. We want you to put more peanuts under the dirt and we want you to do that with less feed, less water, less irrigation, less fertilizer and less land.’ At some point, more with less doesn’t really equate anymore,” Harper said.

He said, however, Expo allows farmers to gather together, where they have the opportunity to figure out how they can do more through innovation and technological advancement.

“But you’ve also got to have people fighting for you in that policy arena, too, to protect this industry, to protect agriculture and I’m glad to have a team like that,” he said.

As an example, he said, just like in Florida, they have passed legislation that a foreign adversary of the US cannot buy agricultural land in the Georgia.

“And I’m proud that we’re doing things like that to protect our industry,” he said.

Harper told the audience that the Georgia Department of Agriculture was established in 1874 so it has existed for 150 years.

“We’re proud to be and to claim the nation’s first Department of Agriculture,” he added.

He also told them that there was a 150th anniversary display at the Expo that showed the work that had been done over the years to ensure that the agricultural industry was successful.

“And we’ve go a lot of work to do to continue to make sure it’s successful and we’ve got to strap-up our boots and we’ve gotta make sure that that happens,” he said.

He went on to say that even before the hurricanes came through, the ag economy in the US was in a pretty tough spot.

“I’m concerned about America’s ag economy. I’m concerned about where we are. High interest rates. High input costs, low commodity prices. All of those are combining for what is going to put our farm families in a very desperate and tight situation, in some cases,” Harper said.

He added, then you throw in on top of that Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton that have completely devastated farms and timber operations all over the Southeast.

With that, he segued into thanking Georgia Power and EMC for getting the operations back online that meant the livelihoods of farm families. He also thanked Reps. Sanford Bishop and Austin Scott for their work on the federal level to help farm families to get the needed assistance as soon as possible.

“They know, like we know, that we can’t have help in six months. It can’t be a year. We’ve got to have assistance and we’e got to have help as soon as possible,” Harper said.

Harper went on to say that things were also being done on the local level to assist farm families with the “Weathered But Strong” hurricane relief fund that is a partnership of 40+ agricultural industries led by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, Georgia Farm Bureau and the Georgia Foundation for Agriculture.

“And if you know someone that is willing to donate to our Georgia Hurricane Relief Fund, ‘Weathered But Strong,’ for our Georgia farm families, please let them know about it,” he said.

He added that they could reach out to his staff or to almost any agricultural organization in the state.

“That money, 100% of those funds are gonna go directly back to our farm families that were impacted by Hurricane Helene. And we appreciate them for doing that,” Harper said.

He then paraphrased what the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson had said earlier at the luncheon,  ”At the end of the day, agriculture is national security. Feeding, clothing and putting shelter over our head every single day is a key component for our nation to be successful. A nation that can’t feed itself, can’t defend itself.”

He said that, in his opinion, a nation that allows its agricultural industry to not be successful is a nation that will go under.

“It’s critical that we support this industry because of the role that it plays for our national security and it’s critical that we allow our farm families to be successful every single day,” Harper said.