How will agriculture issues be addressed in the 2023 ND Legislature?

Growing animal agriculture in North Dakota is a priority for all three guests on this first episode of the legislative season of Straight Talk with NDFB. Learn why as your host, Emmery Mehlhoff visits with NDFB and agriculture legislative leadership.

In this first episode of the sixth season, Emmery talks with NDFB Public Policy Director Pete Hanebutt about the priority issues the organization will work on during the session.

She also visits with new House and Senate Agriculture Committee chairs, Rep. Paul Thomas and Senator Larry Luick.

According to both Rep. Thomas and Sen. Luick, animal agriculture has a number of opportunities to capture growth markets in the state if lawmakers can initiate changes to make the climate more inviting for entrepreneurs. Learn more about what each of them hopes to accomplish in this session.

To learn more about all the bills being discussed during the 68th Legislative Assembly, visit the North Dakota Legislative Assembly website.

To learn more about NDFB's priority issues for the Legislature, visit: NDFB Issues.

To become a member of NDFB visit: Become a new member — NDFB

Contact emails:

NDFB Public Policy Director Pete Hanebutt: pete@ndfb.org 

Representative Paul Thomas: paulthomas@ndlegis.gov 

Senator Larry Luick: lluick@ndlegis.gov

Host Emmery Mehlhoff: emmery@ndfb .org 

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Transcript

[Straight Talk theme opening music]

Emmery Mehlhoff: Welcome to Straight talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. You're listening to our 2023 legislative season, where we talk about all things agriculture and how the North Dakota legislative session could affect your farm or ranch. In today's episode, I visit with Pete Hanebutt, Director of Public Policy for the North Dakota Farm Bureau. Pete talks about NDFB priorities and the issues NDFB will be monitoring during this Legislative Assembly. I also visit with Representative Paul Thomas and Senator Larry Luick, chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees. Representative Thomas and Senator Luick give me the overview on what they expect the 2023 session to deal with in regards to agriculture. Join me for today's conversation as we talk about animal agriculture, taxation, township funding, and more.

[Straight Talk stinger]

Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB, your host here, Emmery Mehlhoff, getting ready for a 2023 legislative session, and we're going to be talking about all things agriculture and how the North Dakota Legislative Assembly could affect your farmer ranch. Right now, I have Pete Hannibet with me who's going to share a little bit about North Dakota Farm Bureau priorities and what we have in the docket for issues that will affect North Dakota Farm Bureau policy. Hi, Pete. How are you?

Pete Hanebutt: I'm wonderful, thank you. It's great to be with you and all the listeners to the podcast.

Emmery: Well, most of you will remember myself and Pete from the last session. We were your lobbying duo working out on the 2021 legislative session, just working to promote NDFB policy and represent all of our members. And we're excited to do that again. We're taking a little bit of different roles. I am going to be your podcast host, but Pete will be more the boots on the ground guy this session as he is at the Capitol. And so, Pete, why don't you just quickly introduce yourself just for our listeners and remind us all how you came to work for the North Dakota Farm Bureau.

Pete: Sure. I grew up in Indiana, where my dad was an extension agent. My mom was a school teacher. And after I got out of Purdue, I started working for the Indiana Farm Bureau. And after a number of years there, North Dakota Farm Bureau made me an offer that I couldn't refuse to come to North Dakota. And so I bring to the table 30 years of public policy activities, not all with the Farm Bureau, in that when I was in college, I did public policy things working at the state legislature in Indiana. But 30 years of legislative lobbying experience and all the things that go with that in the realm of public policy. And so I'm an old hand at this. And when you say boots on the ground, they're pretty well well worn ropers at this point.

Emmery: Tell us some of the issues that North Dakota Farm Bureau is going to be championing through the session this year.

Pete: As you know, at the end of the annual meeting, the Farm Bureau members divide into a few groups, and they pick priorities from our entire policy book. We're going to be looking at transportation issues. As you probably know, Farm Bureau members have always been interested in good infrastructure in the countryside. And some of the frustrations that we've been through in this last, say, 18 months with some choices that the Department of Transportation made, have been problems. And so between always wanting good infrastructure and then always wanting to keep the DOT from making decisions that are harmful to agriculture in general across our entire state, that's one of our priorities.

Higher education is a priority. In the past, we've often supported and will continue to support the idea that we need to do what we can to have more animal veterinarians, large animal veterinarians in this state and whether that means the extreme of finding how to have a vet school or whether that means the system that we have here in a lot of states have if you don't have a veterinary school in your state, a lot of times the states will pay for students from that state to go to someplace else where there is a veterinary school. And we have a reciprocity program and a program where we help with tuition assistance for folks, kids from North Dakota that are going to other places. So many of you in the countryside probably are familiar with the idea that we don't have a veterinarian that was trained at a vet school in North Dakota. We have K State people. We have Iowa State people, we have Colorado State people. We have people from all over the country that are veterinarians in our state, and we're going to try to keep working with that to make sure that we always have veterinarians in this state, particularly large animal veterinarians. And that's a challenge to make sure that we have enough veterinarians. So that's one of the things in higher education that we talk about to support those incentive programs to bring veterinarians to North Dakota.

We also had priorities for a long time dealing with increasing animal agriculture in this state. If we increase animals fed in this state, it doesn't matter if they have a beak or a hoof or a snout, if we can increase those animals being raised in this state, we obviously help our grain farmers as well with creating more of a market for their grain. And so that's been a perennial issue with us, and it will continue to be. And we have some specific legislative initiatives dealing with opportunities to increase tandem agriculture in North Dakota, and we're going to keep hammering on those and keep making progress on those things.

Lastly, I'll talk about private property rights. As you probably know, NDFB is the premier private property rights group in this state. We generally have issues focusing around that that are picked as our priorities, and this year is no different. And so we're going to look out for the landowners and their private property rights. Whenever we have projects, whether it's a pipeline coming through or some kind of other eminent domain type thing or any other thing that could impact someone's private property rights, we're going to focus on those kinds of things. Occasionally, We have seen challenges whenever something is going through, it wouldn't matter if it's a pipeline or transmission line, anything like that. The landowner seems like they are often mistreated by various folks. There's a state agency, obviously, that is supposed to look out for everyone in this. And sometimes it feels like rural members of ours are sometimes, I guess, taken advantage of in the deals that are struck or the way the land man comes out and threatens people or whatever it is. And so we're going to look out for our members and talk to them about what they need to know when the land man comes to knock on their door dealing with a right away or anything like that. It's a long standing challenge for us. But we're the champion of private property rights and we're going to keep working on that one. So there's always something in that realm to work on.

And then finally, energy in our state is one of the pillars of our economy along with agriculture, and we have policy that says we're pro energy. The challenge with all that is sometimes some of this new green stuff is picking winners and losers related to carbon dioxide and sequestration, and we don't feel like taxpayer dollars should be used to promote that kind of stuff. And so that's the last of the priorities that are on our list. And so we're going to look out for how we can fulfill that policy as well.

Otherwise, the session is going to be kind of interesting in that we have all new leadership, as far as the majority leaders. There are some committee chairs that have been the committee chairs for a while, but we have new leadership around the Capitol. I've worked to foster good relationships with those two gentlemen, the majority leaders on both the House and the Senate side. Obviously, we keep constantly working with committee chairs and other relationships at the Capitol, but it is a learning process for everyone when we have a substantial amount of new legislators and new majority leaders on both sides of the hallway.

Emmery: We have not only a new majority leader on both sides, but we also have one new agriculture chairman in the House, and we also have several new chairman and actually several new committees. They've divided up committees differently this session, and so some of the policy might make it through some different committees that hasn't before.

Pete: It'll be a learning process for everyone. To put agriculture and veterans together is unique. I know at least one other state House where agriculture and natural resources have always been linked together here. I think they were separated maybe for good reasons in that we have a different kind of energy than in other places between coal and oil and gas. Other states might have one of those types of energy, but they don't have all of them. And so that probably makes some sense for North Dakota, but it's definitely unique. And so committee assignments, committee chairs, committee issues, even committee titles has had some working over, and that will make for a steeper learning curve for everyone. There are people that are on committees new to them, and there are people on committees that used to have half the title they have now, but now they will work on different topics. And so, for example, those people that are on the Senate Ag Committee haven't had to deal with Veterans Affairs things in the past, and now they will. And so that may not be a distraction, but it'll be a different flavor for different days of the week when they're working on those issues.

The joys of seeing folks that have come through our Farm Bureau campaign school and been around Farm Bureau, just the satisfaction in having former county Farm Bureau presidents as committee chairs, to have people who are, as I say, campaign school graduates filling the halls and being active in the legislature. So it's just a good feeling that we have a lot of friends in that building and we try to work with all of them.

Emmery: Well, this session you can really see the grassroots nature of the North Dakota Farm Bureau from our policy and the implementation of that into legislation, and a lot of that coming through the pike as well as, like you said, not only legislators who are NDFB members or leaders, but also people in leadership, committee chairs, et cetera. And you're right, it is exciting to see that although our state becomes bigger in population and more urban, that we have a strong rural representation and a strong North Dakota Farm Bureau representation. Well, thanks so much, Pete. If you have any questions or concerns during the legislative process, contact Pete Hannebut. His contact information is in our show notes. So thanks so much, Pete, and we will talk to you again soon.

Pete: Look forward to it. Thank you very much.

[Straight Talk stinger]

Emmery: Today I have Representative Paul Thomas with me from Velva, North Dakota. Can you tell us about yourself, about your district? And I believe you have the new responsibility as the new Agriculture Committee Chair.

Rep. Paul Thomas: Yeah, I was elected to the House of Representatives last session, so this is my second session serving in North Dakota House of Representatives. Last session, I also served on the House Ag Committee and the Industry, Business and Labor Committee, serving on those two committees again this session. But as you mentioned, I did get chosen to be the House Ag Committee chair. So I'm looking forward to that role, that leadership role and all that that brings with it.

My district comprises of McHenry, Bottineau and Renville counties and a large portion of McLean County. I feel serving in the House Ag Committee certainly is very beneficial for my district, which is a large geographical district, but a very rural small town district. My wife and I farm just in southern McHenry County. We have our oldest son that's returned back to the farm with us as well as another young gentleman from the community that farms with us as well. So my interest in agriculture is not only personal but also for the benefit of the whole state. The other perspective, as I mentioned, young son coming back to farm with us, middle aged myself, at least I consider myself middle aged, yet I don't think I fall in the category of young anymore, unfortunately. But I think that perspective hopefully brings a lot of depth to experience of the different challenges in agriculture and how we can move hopefully from a state's perspective. Hopefully there are some things we can do this session and going forward that will help the ag economy in North Dakota not only survive, but what I really want to see is thrive and grow.

Emmery: We're in that second week of session here and, and we're just really getting our boots on the ground, so to speak. So how is this 2023 legislative session, what is the outlook and how is it going to affect our day to day operations on our farms and ranches?

Rep. Thomas: Well, I think as I look at the agenda, if you can so call that for the Ag Committee this session, one of the priorities that I'm putting forward and certainly I think it's reflective of our House leadership and many in the House, is animal agriculture. We've clearly seen a steady decrease in the number of all facets of animal agriculture's share of the economy in North Dakota and that's really disappointing to me. I personally only have a grain farm, we used to have a cow calf, but we see statewide there is a lack of value added animal ag happening and I think a number of those number of reasons to that and we're hoping to address that in this session. One of the topic areas that we'll be looking at is some zoning assurances. There's been some attempts by some animal feeding operations to locate in the state and they've had a very difficult time working with some county and zoning issues that have been beyond what state law allows. And that environment certainly isn't conducive for other people looking to become more involved in animal agriculture when they do not have the assurity of the laws that are in place in this state are going to be the laws that they have to operate under. So that's one of the areas we're going to be looking at.

Another area that we see sometimes some hesitancy in the local areas for animal agriculture to locate in that area is some people worry about the needed infrastructure costs or if you want to term it, that the cost to the local subdivisions, whether it's rebuilding a township road or improving upon a county road, so that business and that commerce can occur there. We have a couple of provisions there that I think in this session we're going to take a real hard look at. And I'm really going to push to try and help in the counties and townships in those cases. So that any of the property tax potential burden that would occur, the state's saying, "Hey, we realize that the value of the animal agriculture is not just beneficial to the individual doing it the local community that's located in, but just as much it's extremely important to the state of North Dakota, and we're willing to participate in helping those industries develop here."

And the third other large area that I really want to focus on in this session is we need to look at the capital investment required for these industries. We see the cost of a swine farrowing genetics barn, upwards of $20 million. We've heard numbers much greater for modern dairy barns to be built and operated and poultry barns in excess of millions of dollars with those large capital expenditures that are required to make those operations economically viable. We need outside capital and we need to as a state allow that capital to be invested in our animal agriculture industries. That to me is really what it's about. It's about getting the next generation of agriculture involved not only through grain farming, but through animal agriculture. And I think one of the priorities of this session should be making that a top priority, that the next generation of agriculture is available to access capital to pursue their animal agricultural interests. So those to me were probably the three key areas that I see that we as a state can play an important role in advancing animal agriculture.

Emmery: We always talk about like how do we get my generation, how do we get the young generation back to the farm? And just with the decreasing population of young people, millennials, the next gen z, the zoomers, whatever they're called, looking at coming back into production agriculture, we talk about all sorts of different ways that we can incentivize or encourage that to happen. But when you're looking at such large levels of capital required or you're talking about you need a lot of stuff to get involved now it's not so much like you can just bring your horse and plow, although I mean, there's something to be said about that too.

Rep. Thomas: But yeah, I think to your comment there that there's the horse and plow analogy, there's probably room, well, I know there is. There's room for all different sizes and scopes of animal agriculture in this state. I think we're going to see the continued opportunity for smaller, let's say locally grown beef or pork or whatever the case is, sold to the local market or sold to the neighbors or even to a little bit larger scale possibly even to the school systems, that is slowly starting to happen. We're seeing those entrepreneurs create that value added operation to their farms. But overall we know that the populations are not within North Dakota, they're outside North Dakota. And the economies of scale required for successful animal production primarily are large operating facilities that acquire employees and require again, as we talked, a significant amount of capital.

One of the.. really the heart of this whole issue too is as we look beyond just not only that operation becoming successful, by improving upon our animal ag numbers we also make our rural communities more successful, more populous. We have farm expansions happening just because of the efficiencies of the equipment, the size of the equipment. So I really don't see that changing anytime soon. Where farmers are going to continue to improve efficiency, they're most likely going to continue to grow in size. And as that happens we're going to see less and less people in these rural areas. In my opinion, the best way to reverse that is to complement it with animal agriculture where you don't need to be adding significant amounts of land, rather just utilizing some of those landscapes that aren't real productive for whether it's a cow-calf operation, whether it's a wheat farming operation.

There's areas on all of our farms where a barn or some sort of animal agriculture facility could add significant value, could add jobs, add young people coming back home, having children, being involved in their local communities. And then the spur off business that you create from that, from the local feed mill to the transportation opportunities, is just tremendous. And I just think that we are missing the boat so bad as a state. And that now with the addition of potentially three new soybean crush plants being built and that soy meal being located right here in our own state, we really have the choice right now to either develop animal agriculture and develop and expand upon a rural communities economic base. Or we can load that soymeal on train cars and semis and ship it out of this state and let some other community and some other state get those benefits. And to me it's just really disappoints me if we cannot move forward in this state with animal agriculture.

Emmery: I like how we talk about the economic development benefit economically to the communities but also talking about how can we improve the quality of life in our rural communities like you said, especially as we become less and less populated, how can we attract people to our rural areas. And we're not just talking about capital for the state or economic development for the state, but also a growth and improving the quality of our local communities too.

Rep. Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And just wanted to touch on a couple of other things maybe not specifically through the agriculture committee but I think very important to our rural areas. One of those, I think. Well, I know the number of legislators are working on, including myself, is looking at the infrastructure funds that come from the state to townships and counties, specifically whether that's road funds through our highway distribution tax funds, the prairie dog buckets, how they're filling, maybe adjusting the positioning of that to get money to the townships and counties quicker or in a way that they can count on it.

One of the provisions that I've looked at and drafted that I'm hoping we can move the needle forward on is in our state, our bridge condition is atrocious, to say the least. We have over $735 million in bridge needs, whether that be replacement or upgrades. All those costs are born upon county taxes. I really believe that this is a time for the state to step in and play the role of filling in that gap there, taking care of those bridge needs for our counties and townships across North Dakota and alleviating that potential or that future tax burden that we as local taxpayers are going to have to pay if the state doesn't step in to do that. I think our state is positioned right now in a financial way that they can afford to do it, and I think now is the time to do that.

The other thing that's really important always to the ag community is our research and extension budget through NDSU. And we'll continue to work hard on that to maintain the sufficient funds to continue to drive the research that improves our agriculture production as well as our extension programs to get that research information out to us. And then, I think, certainly supporting the efforts to replace Waldron Hall at the NDSU campus and create a world class potato, wheat, barley breeding facility there, soil science facility for not only the students that go there to learn, but even as importantly, for the researchers that we're trying to attract and retain to build and develop our wheat and barley and potato breeding programs and everything else that we do through that school.

Emmery: Well, thank you so much, Representative Thomas, for giving us an overview and some of the priorities and things that we're going to be looking at through your committee. And I'm sure we'll be talking again here as session proceeds and visiting about how it's going. So thanks again.

Rep. Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you very much Emmery.

[Straight Talk stinger]

Emmery: I have Senator Larry Luick from Fairmont, North Dakota, with me now, and he is the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Why don't you just tell us about yourself, about your farm and where you're from and how long you've been in the Senate.

Sen. Larry Luick: So I farm in the very southeast corner of the state of North Dakota in Richland County. It's not a large farm, but I do a lot of custom seeding beans and wheat in the spring and custom combining in the fall. I also run the excavating business, so I am staying very busy doing that kind of work. I've been in the Legislature since 2011, always on the Agriculture Committee, Education Committee, my first two sessions, and then I moved to Judiciary. So I am the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, which also has taken on the Veteran Affairs works this session and then I'm also on the Judiciary Committee as well. So we've got some exciting bills coming at us this session, both committees. Looking forward to the session.

Emmery: It is new to have the Veterans Affairs and Agriculture , I guess they decided that you weren't busy enough over there, so they gave you some extra work. (laughs) So we're looking at you as the chairman for the Senate Agriculture Committee and we're in our second week of session. Can you tell us your outlook for agriculture for session? How do you think things are going to shake out for agriculture and how do you think the policies that you guys are looking at will affect our farms and ranches?

Sen. Luick: I'm not sure if you saw the governor's state of the state address, but he in his address brought to the forefront some of the things that we've been looking at for the last two sessions, and that is to focus more on animal agriculture in this state, to improve it, to advance it, to just do whatever we can to bring more livestock in all forms to the state of North Dakota. I have been pushing for not only the increase of livestock agriculture, but also value added processing in the state. And we are getting now a couple of new soybean processing plants, which is exciting. We obviously need that. And when we are raising these products and then shipping them out of state, we are not taking advantage of that huge revenue increase that we could be getting from the value added processing.

Emmery: So you know that firsthand too from living in your area because you're not too far from the Minnesota border, correct?

Sen. Luick: Absolutely, Emmery. I have seen personally the loss of some very large dairies just jumping across the state line into Minnesota. They were holding off until that referendum was passed to stop corporate farming dealing with the dairies in the state, and those dairies all could have been in North Dakota. So we're going to be working on this.

Emmery: What else do you see as far as agriculture outlook for the session?

Sen. Luick: In my committee right now, we just dealt or dealing with we haven't even voted on it yet the couple of different licensures of beef processing issues. Got a few of those around the state. We've got well, in my committee coming up on Thursday, we've got commodity reports, which is always interesting to listen to. There's also going to be some other reports on different topics with the carbon capture or the CO2 pipeline coming through the state that's on Friday we're going to have just a little informational session on that. So there are things that affect agriculture coming at us and....

Emmery: You're going to be looking at some water drainage bills?

Sen. Luick: That is correct, yes. They're coming at us from the standpoint of how do we want to change some of the laws that were in Century Code that have been morphed into something that is not working. And so we cleaned those up last session and during the interim and they're still a hot topic, so we'll be looking at those as well.

Emmery: Thank you so much, Senator Luke, for joining me and for being the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and representing us on that committee as farmers and ranchers. And we will be checking in with you, like you said, later on in session to see how things are progressing and to get updates. So thanks again and have a wonderful day.

Sen. Luick: Thank you very much.

[Straight Talk stinger]

Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. Join me every Wednesday as I release podcasts pertaining to issues being discussed at the 2023 Legislative session. If you would like to learn more about NDFB policy and how to become a member, visit us at ndfb.org.

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