RALEIGH — Inflation and regulatory challenges were recurring themes at the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce’s Ag Allies 2024 conference earlier this month.
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture announced in 2023 that the state’s agriculture and agribusiness had an economic impact of $103.2 billion, and the Tarheel State typically ranks among the top five producers of hogs, poultry, eggs, tobacco and sweet potatoes, and is ninth in the nation overall in agricultural products that are sold.
Notable Speakers at the conference, held Oct 11 at the McKimmon Center at NC State, included Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and Bart Fischer, co-director and AgriLife Associate Professor at Texas A&M University’s Agricultural and Food Policy Center.
Fischer gave an hour-long presentation that featured a deep dive into the impact of inflation on farms, trade deficits, the explosion of food costs and a look at the not-yet-passed 2024 Farm Bill.
Fischer said food prices are 22% higher than four years ago, a rate that is “unprecedented” in the last 50 years. While prices are now trending in a better direction, Fischer said they’re still expected to increase by 2% annually.
Fischer emphasized the inherent risks in farming, saying, “Agriculture is very unique; one of the few areas of business where your entire livelihood can be wiped out in one day.”
Fischer pointed out the current economic pressures on farmers, explaining that “the amount that it’s costing for them to put a crop in the ground is huge, but the prices they’re receiving for it have plummeted.”
It has led to a collapse in farm incomes over the past two years, he said, with federal policies struggling to keep pace with inflation and unforeseen events like the global pandemic.
With the United States becoming a net importer in agriculture, Fischer called the agricultural trade deficit “pretty alarming” but emphasized that many imports are meeting domestic demand for products not produced locally.
“There is an importer who’s importing because there’s a consumer demand for that product that’s otherwise not being met domestically,” Fischer stated. He also noted the trade deficit partly reflects lower commodity prices.
Fischer said there is still “a lot of opportunity for us to be doing a lot more on the export side of the equation.”
“I hope the takeaway is that while many of us think about agriculture as this nostalgic and idyllic industry, it is incredibly complex,” Ray Starling, general counsel for the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, told North State Journal.
“You have heard speakers talk about the development of biotechnology. You’ve heard speakers talk about dollars and cents in terms of pure economics. You’ve heard them talk about policy at the federal level, policy at the state level. You’ve heard them talk about international trade, the value of the dollar. All of these things impact profitability for sure on the farm but also throughout the Agri-value chain.
“And so what we like to pride ourselves in, the conversation we want to have happening here is we’ve got to look at all of those things at one time. I don’t think there’s another place in the state where you can come have that kind of conversation where you’ve got farmers in the room, bankers in the room, agri-business owners in the room, meat processors, people working on the biotech front and the universities, the lenders — the whole nine yards.”
Regan, who was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality under Gov. Roy Cooper before joining the EPA under the Biden administration in March 2021, also spoke at the conference.
Regan began his remarks by acknowledging the destruction from Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state. He said Cooper, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Congressman Chuck Edwards (R-NC-11) had joined him last week in touring some of the areas impacted by the hurricane.
“We went around and looked at the things that we need to do together and we’re going to really have to work together to put North Carolina, western North Carolina, back together again,” said Regan, adding that he had talked to Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler the same morning as the Chamber’s event and “committed to him, on behalf of President Biden, that we’re going to do everything we can to cut through the red tape and help our neighbors and our friends.”
Regan then pivoted to climate change.
“But the reality is that we’re experiencing climate change, and our American farmers find themselves on the front lines,” Regan said. “Whether it’s a severe storm like the one we just recently experienced with Helene or the more frequent wildfires that I’ve seen out West or the droughts that we’re seeing in the southwest, the climate crisis as we know it is eroding agricultural productivity and causing major crop losses for countless producers.”
Regan also mentioned EPA’s newly established Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, saying it was “expanding engagement opportunities and solidifying our agency’s relationship with the agricultural sector for years to come.” He also said this was the first time such an agency has been established with “real resources toward that agency.”
