By Charlie Elrod, Ph.D.
President, Natural Biologics, Inc.
Vice President, NEAFA
February 6 marked our first, full-blown lobby day since the pandemic and was a rousing success! Nine NEAFA members and three of our Hinman-Straub colleagues split up into three teams and hit the Legislative Office Building. Hinman-Straub did a great job lining up about twenty appointments, including with many members of the Senate and Assembly from the NEAFA members’ districts. We had a profile for each legislator we were to meet with and copies of the budget priorities for the College of Ag & Life Sciences. The meetings are scheduled for 30 minutes, but in reality we typically had about 20 minutes of focused conversation. With the smaller groups we spent less time on introductions and could more readily get to the substance of the conversation.
Because the Governor had come out very strong on funding agricultural programs and projects in her budget, one of our highest priorities was to demonstrate support for the Governor’s budget. In a few instances, we asked for restorations or additional funding for specific programs or positions. Funding an additional Farm Labor Specialist, the Dairy Entrepreneurship and Innovation Hub, the PRO-Livestock program, Dairy Farm Modernization Grants, Dairy Profit Teams and other programs were among those which we discussed.
In addition to the budgetary discussions, we also made the case that transportation issues are still a major hurdle across agriculture. A lack of CDL drivers, emergency road closures, and inconsistent weight limits were among the transportation issues discussed. As in the past, several legislators have asked us to bring back specific policy recommendations to be included in legislation. We will work with NY Farm Bureau and NEDPA to begin to formulate these instead of letting others write the language and we end up just reacting to it.
It was great to see some younger NEAFA members joining us for lobby day and we look forward to collaborating with our colleagues in NEDPA and NYFB to support and grow a sustainable agribusiness industry in the Northeast.