FARM AID

Budget woes starve agriculture to feed the economy.
Are cuts on the table just a taste of what’s to come?
WRITTEN BY JESSICA SANTINA
PAINTING BY ANDREW BOLAM

When the proposed cuts made in the February 2010 special legislative session were handed down, it was hard for many in Nevada’s agriculture industry not to take it personally.

The proposals called for the elimination of several programs within the University of Nevada, Reno’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources (CABNR), and the entire Plant Industry Division of the Nevada Department of Agriculture, which encompasses the state’s organic certification program. The Plant Industry Division is safe— for now— but with a projected $3 billion hole facing lawmakers in 2011, all bets are off.

Meanwhile, there are more than 80 small, local farms in Northern Nevada alone. And in the midst of a plummeting economy, Nevada’s local and organic food movement keeps gaining momentum.

A final decision on the UNR cuts will be made in June, so it’s possible the situation will change. But why are so many agriculture cuts on the table in the first place? Don’t we value the industry anymore?

THE UNKINDEST CUT

The CABNR losses of Wolf Pack Meats and the Main Station Farm would be painful. Wolf Pack Meats, the only USDA-inspected slaughtering and processing facility in Nevada, enables local, hormone-free beef producers to become USDA-certified locally, then quickly put their products out to market. Without it, local ranchers say they’re stuck going out of state, which becomes cost prohibitive and can create a negative impact on the animals.

Also on the chopping block is the Main Station Farm, the 1,000-acre research, teaching, and production facility in east Reno that operates as a hands-on research lab for students learning to work in production agriculture (from animal husbandry and haying to crop production and meat production). Stuart Taylor, Main Station manager, points out that 87 percent of Nevada is comprised of public lands.

“There has to be livestock on that land,” he says. “It’s essential to the state. There’s a culture of agriculture in this state that we need to provide a service to.”

DEATH KNELL

But is the agricultural culture dying?

“There’s a huge transition away from the agrarian society,” says Kevin Piper, assistant director for the Nevada Agriculture Experiment Station, a production agriculture research station that helps satisfy the university’s land-grant mission. “So getting people back into understanding agriculture production and methods, the importance of locally grown produce and meats, is really the key.” He suggests that the state also may be looking at the potential commercial real estate value of the Main Station land and its water rights.  Of the proposed CABNR cuts, Provost Marc Johnson says UNR leaders are doing everything they can to mitigate the damage to agriculture education offerings.

“The budget situation has forced us to make very difficult decisions,” he says. “While the intention is to minimize the damage to the university, we will regrettably lose some good programs. In the case of agriculture-related teaching and research, we believe we can deliver programs that serve the needs of the industry and the state, but at a lesser cost. Our commitment to agriculture remains strong, and we have appreciated the input and involvement of industry leaders as we have worked toward solutions and a future organizational structure.”

Meanwhile, unless a last-minute decision in early June reverses the current plan (the decision was too late for press time),Wolf Pack Meats and the Main Station Farm will disappear, with many people never quite realizing the full positive impact they have on the community.

“Agriculture has had a problem for a number of years, in that we’ve fallen somewhat short in educating our consumers,” Taylor says, adding that the farm opens to the public once each year to contribute a bit toward that education. “But that’s one thing the Main Station and Wolf Pack Meats really provide to the Reno community: that connection between product and consumer.”

FOOD VALUES

“The old joke goes, ‘How can you make a small fortune farming? Start with a large fortune,’” says Ed Foster, regional manager of Nevada Department of Agriculture’s Division of Plant Industry. He is still reeling from his department’s near-miss, having just faced Nevada Sen. Steven Horsford’s proposal to close the entire Plant Industry Division, including the state’s organic certification program.

“If you have five kids and own a ranch, most of them will go off to college, and maybe one will stay and run the ranch,” Foster says.  “Haying at night, four hours of sleep… it’s hard work. So I don’t think it’s just in Nevada. The world takes farming and ranching for granted.”

What mostly concerns him, though, is its prevalence among Nevada’s legislators.

“We have some great legislators, many of whom are ag-friendly or even aggies themselves,” Foster says. “But in this last session, one guy from Las Vegas said, ‘There is no agriculture in my district.’ Our response was, ‘Did you eat breakfast today?’ It seems an impossible hump to get past, getting people to realize that agriculture is the bedrock of civilization.”

A Cooperative Extension System report in 2000 said that while most taxpayers, consumers, and lawmakers live in metropolitan areas, and misunderstand how relevant agriculture is to their own communities, 16 million of the 22 million U.S. farming jobs were in metro areas.

“We had a booth set up at a recent Las Vegas event,” Foster says. “I asked one kid where milk came from, and he said, ‘The store.’ I said, ‘No, before that.’ He had no idea. That’s the mentality that will get agriculture in trouble.”

Although organics is growing steadily, it still brings in a pittance when compared to larger industries such as manufacturing. Still, the fact that Walmart officials told Foster they are interested in carrying local certified organics in their Nevada stores is one sign that makes him hopeful about the program’s future luck with lawmakers.

“I don’t see the industry doing anything but growing in Nevada,” Foster says. “Anything this state sees growing, we ought to hang onto.”

Jessica Santina is a Sparks-based freelance writer with eight years of cumulative experience teaching writing courses at the University of Nevada, Reno and University of Phoenix.