NC Farm Families Honors Veterans

On November 2, NC Farm Families and AgCarolina Farm Credit co-hosted a special dinner for veterans in the community. The evening was held at the Mad Boar in Wallace where veterans and guests were treated to a plated dinner. Over 30 veterans attended, representing every branch of military.

We were pleased to have East Duplin High School JROTC members present colors and begin the event with the pledge of allegiance.

Students from B.F. Grady Elementary School in Duplin County sent handmade cards for veterans in attendance. These cards were touching and meant a lot to attendees.

Andy Curliss, National Director for Strategic Initiaves for SAS brought the keynote speech where he shared stories of veterans in his heritage and life.

In addition to veterans, special guests included: Representative Edward Goodwin and Representative Jimmy Dixon.

This event would not have been possible without our sponsors. AgCarolina Farm Credit was our event sponsor. AgCarolina provides credit to farmers and mortgages for rural homeowners in 46 counties across central, eastern, and southeastern North Carolina. We were very grateful to have Tri-County EMC, Hog Slat, and Smithfield Foods as table sponsors. We also want to thank NC Pork Council, Murphy Family Ventures, Prestage Farms, Align RNG, and Maxwell Foods for their support.

Agriculture is the number one industry in North Carolina. We have more than 45,000 farms across the state, and the vast majority of those are run by farm families. Just as North Carolina is major player in the world of agriculture, our state is also a leader when it comes to the military. We have eight military bases here, and more than 122,000 active duty and reserve members of the military living in North Carolina. That puts us at #4 in the nation.

We were proud to be able to honor and serve our veterans in the community. Thank you to everyone who came and had a hand in making it happen.

And thank you veterans for your sacrifices. Words are never enough.

NC Farm Act contains no loopholes for industry expansion.

In politics, people often attempt to “twist the facts” in hopes of persuading others to support their views. Other times, they just flat out tell mistruths.

That’s exactly what we saw in a recent WRAL opinion column about the NC Farm Act, which was signed into law this week. The article, written by a Duke law professor who is a frequent critic of North Carolina’s pork industry, falsely claimed that the legislation would allow pig farms “to expand for the first time since 1997.”

That’s simply not true.

Let’s start with some background. The legislature imposed a moratorium on new or expanded pig farms in 1997. That moratorium became permanent in 2007. As a result, no new hog farms have been built in North Carolina in the past 23 years. 

Nothing about this year’s Farm Act changes any of that.  

What the Farm Act does do is allow pig farms to cover existing swine manure treatment lagoons or replace their lagoons with a methane digester. The purpose: to capture biogas that can be used to generate clean renewable energy.

These actions represent an advancement in manure management that should be celebrated by environmental groups. 

Instead, they are trying to stoke fears with false accusations.

The legislation is clear. It specifically prohibits the construction of new farms or the expansion of existing pig farms that don’t meet strict environmental performance standards. 

This legislation simply codifies into law what the NC Department of Environmental Quality has already been doing. Since 2011, the department has issued more than 20 permits for pig farms to cover their treatment lagoons or install methane digesters.

These new technologies are being adopted by more farmers across the state, representing an innovative step in how pig manure is managed. It is an advancement that should be encouraged.(The professor also tried to attach pig farms to an issue reporters care deeply about: public records. A separate provision in the bill aligns local and state privacy concerns with existing federal law. It has very little to do with pig farms, which account for only about 3% of the records at issue.)Sadly, some folks just can’t acknowledge there are positive steps being taken by family farmers and pork producers. They contort themselves into odd positions just to oppose progress — because they oppose modern agriculture. 

Sadly, too, they toss aside facts and disregard the truth. 

A first-hand look at our farms

An important part of the work we do at NC Farm Families is educating people about our farms. There are so many people in our state who have never set foot on a farm and don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the role our farmers play in feeding our nation and fueling our economy.

One way we’re working to change that is inviting people to spend a day in eastern North Carolina touring our farms and facilities.

NC Farm Families recently had the opportunity to spend the day with more than two dozen state legislators. It included first-term legislators and politician veterans from both sides of the aisle. They came from Raleigh, and Charlotte, and Greensboro, and points in between from across the state.

The tour began at a feed mill in Warsaw, then moved on to turkey farms, hog farms, and a renewable energy project that is now turning hog waste into natural gas.

Along the way, the legislators had the opportunity to have real conversations with our family farmers. They had a chance to peek inside barns, stand next to lagoons, and see for themselves what it is like to live and work on a North Carolina farm.

We are so grateful to each and every one of the legislators who took time out of their busy schedule to join us, to Rep. Jimmy Dixon for helping organize the tour, and to the individual farmers who graciously opened their farms to visitors.

We believe there is no better way to showcase the importance of North Carolina’s family farms than to let people see them for themselves.