Agriculture - House Small Business and Economic Dev Subcommittee
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Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
5:00
we're gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order we appreciate everybody being here today first on the agenda we need a motion to approve the minutes from our meeting from October the 27th have a motion all in favor minutes are approved we will have a sign-up sheet over here on the front desk for anybody from the public that wants to sign up to speak today.
We're going to go a little bit out of order on the agenda. Mr. Bolden has been held up. He will be here, but he's running a little behind. So Clinton Ballard will be first on our agenda to present on the laws that we passed this last session regarding raw dairy. So Mr. Ballard, if you would come to the table and identify yourself, and you'll be recognized to present to the committee.
Speaker 5
6:11
Hi. My name's Clint Ballard. I'd like to thank you all for taking time to listen to what I have to say. am excited to tell you how Act 698 impacted us and our farm. My wife and I run Milk and Honey Hill Farm. We're a 40-acre family farm in Logan County, and we moved here in 2010, so we've been residents since then. We started our farm in about 2016. At that time, we started with just one cow
to provide the best food we could for our family and as word got out that we had good raw milk people started coming to us asking for for milk to buy so last year in 2024 we had grown to about eight cows milk and eight cows and we were feeding about 75 families with the passage of the raw milk Bill 698. This past spring, we've grown to milk in 12 cows, and we're feeding approximately 150
families. That translates to about a $50,000 increase in our sales for that last year, which is roughly about the same as the median income for Arkansas individuals. that's been a huge blessing for our family the bill also legalized selling raw cheese and raw milk products which my wife really enjoys doing that's that's allowed us to
sell our products in three retail places natural food stores and that includes cheese that we wouldn't otherwise be able to sell or bring to market because of things like this past winter when that big snowstorm hit. Our customers couldn't get to us and we couldn't get off the farm to deliver milk. So my wife was able to turn milk that would have gone to the hogs into 80 pounds of sellable cheese. We've sold approximately $10,000 worth of cheese in the
past year since the bill was enacted one other point that i'd like to bring up is the right now the dairy farmers of america the milk cooperative that commercial dairy farmers have to sell through they're paying about a dollar 75 per gallon off the farm and we're making ten dollars per gallon off the farm. So that's about a 500% difference in the income that our family gets compared to a
commercial dairy. I'd like to take just a couple of minutes to, I think there's some really good arguments on both the food freedom side and the food safety side for raw milk, but I'll just stick with the economic impact for today, but I'm sure you all have heard that farmers and small business people
Speaker 8
9:29
in general are a lot like puppies. They all whine, but puppies will
eventually stop. So I'd like to do a
Speaker 5
9:39
little whining if I could. Historically, in Arkansas, around the 1980s there were a thousand commercial dairies operating in the state and through policies like the federal government paying dairy farmers to quit producing and several state laws that were passed to try to stabilize milk prices those commercial dairies have gone
down to about 10 operating in the state today, and that translates into about 10% of the milk that Arkansas needs being produced in the state, so 90% of the milk that Arkansas is drink is shipped in from out of state um i think i think that has a a food security aspect to it that that needs attention and it reminds me of some of the lessons we learned
during covid about depending on supply lines instead of regional food safety shortly after COVID there were bills passed allowing for meat processing plants to have a state inspection instead of a USDA inspection and allow that meat to be sold in the state and it had a big impact on beef producers being able to get their cattle slaughtered and to consumers, I see that food security
Speaker 5
11:23
production in the state as well. I think Bill 698 did a great step in that direction to help the state be able to supply the milk for its own people instead of being dependent on producers from up north or down south. One thing I would like to bring up is how the executive agencies are able to interpret
the laws that you all pass, and it really affects us as producers. Some history in the 1920s and 30s, dairy production in the state was encouraged and emphasized by county extension agents as a way to develop rural economies. But today, the county and the health department will not inspect dairies unless they sell to a commercial buyer.
So if I, as a small producer, wanted to get licensed as a dairy, the health department won't do it because I'm not selling to the DFA or another milk plant. And this kind of locks me out of access to federal grants that are in place in other states
Speaker 8
12:48
through the USDA to give grants for value-added equipment and marketing and other things that Farm Bill, the federal
Speaker 5
12:58
Farm Bill that's passed each year allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to that.
But because I'm not a licensed dairy, I can't even apply for those types of programs. The health department also spends a lot of time and energy producing literature that actually dissuades consumers from buying my raw milk because of food safety concerns. I can understand that it may be controversial, but I feel like that time and resources would be better spent trying to help me produce a better product if the concern is health.
So, for example, on a commercial dairy, the health department inspects the dairy facility and does bacteriological testing regularly. If I could volunteer to get that certification, I would gladly do it. but the health department doesn't allow for that at this time.
Speaker 13
14:17
I think that's about all that I'd like to say, but I'd welcome any questions y'all have. representative cozart you're
Chair
Unverified
14:27
recognized thank you mr chair just a couple questions what uh what breeds do you have that of your milk out what what are they
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
14:35
are they mixed are you just got one breed that you use we like jerseys they're mostly
Speaker 6
14:41
jerseys there's a few okay so you stick with that
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
14:44
and everything's pretty well the same yeah um so and i've always wondered this since
you're not checked by the health department so what happens when you have a sick cow do you pull it offline and and hold that cow until it gets well yes sir okay so that's that's a good that that gives me a better understanding of what y'all do and i kind of thought that but my dad was a dairy farmer when i was very very young and it was a lot different than it is now but like you said all those dairies have pretty well just about disappeared and i was at a cattleman's if you give me just a second mr. chair I was at a cattleman's meeting last night and we
were talking about a new tick that's on the round and it's getting close to you if it's not already there and it's a long-eared Asian long-eared tick it's what they call it and it's pretty pretty potent for cows it's going to cause a lot of problems with them and it's very very small it's a little bigger than a seed tick more like a yearling tick it doesn't get really really big but it causes a lot of problems and it's going to be very devastating there's no vaccine for it so for dark for dairy farmers that their cows get infected with that that's going to be pretty
devastating to some of y'all because you have to have them offline until they actually clear and it could take a little time so something for you to watch and make sure you don't get that so but anyway keep up the good work and we're glad to have you doing what you're doing I drank raw milk till I got out of high school. My
Chair
Unverified
16:16
dad sold the cows. So So thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
16:21
you Representative Richmond Thank you, mr. Chair It is interesting
how so many of us are sons or grandsons or something of dairy farmers
I was saying with representative Kozar I can remember when there was dairy farms all over the state of arkansas and now you can't really find one appreciate what you're doing My question is concerning your name is Milk
and Honey Farms. Do you also have bees? We do. How many hives do you have? I have 12 right now. 12 hives? Do you sell that honey as well? Yes,
sir. What kind of resources does the state provide you concerning your bee protection
and your honey production as far as dealing with tracheal, varioa mites, hive beetles, all these different pests and things, hive collapse, all these things. Does the state, from the universities, or anybody, are they available to give you assistance or have offered to give you assistance, or you pretty much had to do it on your own? Honestly, I guess I
Speaker 5
17:25
haven't asked. I'm not sure if it's available or not. Do you have problems with
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
17:30
any of these pests? Do you treat for them?
Speaker 6
17:33
I don't. I don't treat for them. i i expect to have losses just as part of the beekeeping i
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
17:42
appreciate your leeway mr chair but do you know what what type of bees do you have do you
Speaker 10
17:49
have russians italians i i requeened with russians okay several years ago but i
Speaker 8
17:54
haven't had a whole lot of trouble with colony collapse or um usually if if i lose a hive it's to stores being depleted
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
18:03
okay all right yeah the russians
a little more aggressive on their hygienics so that might be one of the things that are helping you all
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
18:17
right thank you very much appreciate it yes sir representative rye yes sir let me let me ask you this
this certification that you were speaking about that's something that you would have to have to be able to do this instead of going
Speaker 5
18:31
through that next step is that right well the if the if the state was to inspect raw milk producers like they do
with commercial dairies it would allow me to apply for USDA grants for things like pasteurization equipment if I wanted to go that route or a cheese vat that could have more capacity
Speaker 27
18:50
or something like that thank you sir yes thank you mr chairman for letting me representative steele thank you
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
19:05
mr chairman um everything unlike some of some of you guys everything i've learned about
raw milk been from you chairman cooper uh but uh my question is are we talking uh cow milk, I'm sure, goat milk. Are there any other animals that produce milk that's, of course, it would be unpasteurized, but any other animals we're talking about
Speaker 5
19:32
other than cows and goats? There are. That USDA grant that I mentioned includes water buffalo and just about any other
Speaker 6
19:38
mammal, but cow's milk I'm sure is the vast majority.
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
19:42
Yeah. representative steel there there there is a market for sheep milk we have a sheep milk producer in white county who who sells quite a bit so and she makes cheese from that sheep milk as well let's
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
20:07
see next we have senator Gilmore hey thank you mr. chair um so
i'd like to hear how you envision maybe this certification going from the health department standpoint um so we we don't have anything like this right now is that correct well or the from an
Speaker 5
20:30
inspection standpoint yeah as i understand it the um i'm not going to get the terminology right but the health department has a dairy department that their job is to inspect dairy farms
just like I would imagine similar to restaurants on a monthly or some regular schedule. And so when they do that, there's on
Speaker 5
21:01
guidelines for a grade A dairy and it has detailed, you know, this is the construction of the floor, the walls, everything. but if the producer doesn't sell to a milk cooperative like DFA,
the health department doesn't take the time to inspect them. It was, as I understand it, the first law in 2016 that legalized raw milk, the health department said it would be too costly to implement any of that standards for raw milk producers, I'm guessing because there's so many of us and I'm not suggesting that it be mandatory for raw milk producers I'm suggesting if it was optional that I could ask the health department to do the same for me that they do to commercial producers then that would open me up both as a another
marketing thing to set me apart and as a way to get additional funding yeah thank you and that's sort
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
22:04
of what i was trying to figure out the the motivation there so it would be to say hey i'm you know i'm i'm unique or there's a distinction between me and whomever else um so would you envision it follow up if i may mr chair do you envision it
being similar standards to what they currently have for other dairies yeah yeah i've
Speaker 13
22:26
been in several commercial dairy parlors and
Speaker 10
22:30
And I'm sure my standard is as high, if not higher, than what is already the grade A standard. So I presume, again,
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
22:39
follow up, Mr. Chair. I presume the only distinction would be, well, I don't know if most dairies, I'm assuming most dairies don't pasteurize on site anyway. That's correct. Yeah, okay. So as far as just the dairy goes, it would just be those standards? Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you.
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
23:01
Thank you. Representative Eubanks. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to follow up on that. Is that a state regulation or is it a federal regulation if you don't sell to a commercial facility in order to have the health department do
Speaker 5
23:23
the inspection? I think there are both. It's a state law and a federal statute. but the federal deals with crossing state lines.
So I think it's similar to the USDA inspections for meat. If we were to inspect and certify in-state, then we could sell in-state, but I wouldn't expect my state standard to meet
Speaker 61
23:44
Oklahoma state standard, say. So if Arkansas changed their regulation, you could get
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
23:50
a health department inspection, But you'd only be able to sell in-state. Is that what you're saying? I believe so. That's okay. Thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
24:07
Representative Garner Thank you, mr. Chair and thank y'all for being here Just for a little background. I'm a nurse practitioner. I'm also
in Northwest Arkansas where we sell a lot of raw cheese a lot of raw milk I'm all about choice, but I'm also extremely concerned about the safety especially for kids and and for pregnant women So I just want to know from you guys what you're doing for safety measures and education as well. And I agree that I think there should be something that we could do on the state level
to make sure that you guys are doing everything you need so that you can sell. But I also am extremely concerned about E. coli and kids. So can you just help me understand what you guys do and what we need to do as a state to make sure that those things are happening because there is a difference in in milk that's even though the certification representative eubanks would be the same for a dairy that's pasteurizing and that's and a dairy that's not the the there is a difference in that milk after
it's pasteurized so they should they may not be exactly the same but I'm all for that if we can figure out how to do it but just help me understand your safety measures and what we're doing to educate folks about understanding exactly what they're
Speaker 5
25:31
getting when they get raw milk yeah yes ma'am i think the the grade a standard is the standard that we use so the biggest thing on the health side i think is to chill the milk quickly um you know before that obviously the
industry standard best practices like you know identifying sick animals and not milking them at all is a given but then utter care getting the teats clean and using a disinfecting alcohol wipe before before milking all the sanitary procedures but chilling the milk down quickly is the so the grade a standard is to chill the milk to less than 40 degrees within one hour of the finishing
of milking and that's what every farmer that i know strives for even small folks that are milking by hand try to get their milk you know in the freezer and remember to pull it out in an hour or whatever it is so that they can achieve that rapid cooling um and then from from my perspective
Speaker 8
26:38
on the health side the taste of the consumer is the biggest um that's the biggest pro for sure it's the biggest uh indicator of a lack of standards
Speaker 5
26:51
because um if if you're milking an unwell animal or using poor sanitary technique that milk is going to taste very bad it's not going to be palatable and people will know it if you take that same milk and pasteurize it people won't tell the difference and because my kids are drinking my milk you know and I'm drinking it I'm striving for a standard you know higher than what somebody would certify I want to make sure I'm not getting my kids sick because they're drinking that same
And so that standard is what I strive for. And I know if
Speaker 8
27:29
I'm producing high-quality, tasteful milk, then it is healthy. It's safe. So in the 10 years we've been selling milk, we've never had a food-related question. None of our customers have gotten sick. Our kids haven't. But on the inspection side, the state, state whenever they come by and look at
Speaker 5
27:55
the floors or whatever they sample. The dairy
sampling is very specific training so that you're not introducing false results by saying, you know, taking a dirty instrument and it looks like the milk is unclean when really it's just an untrained technician.
Speaker 8
28:12
The state does that for the dairies, but it's bacteriological testing, so the E. coli and things like that, they'll pick up, but it won't pick up, you know, if an animal has subclinical mastitis, so she's just a little bit, it's still going
to flavor the milk if it was raw, but when it goes through pasteurization, you can't taste that, so. Interesting, and follow up,
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
28:38
Mr. Chair, what about the education, so do all of, how do you, how do you get that education out to folks? for the pros and cons, and I think there are pros and cons for both, for sure. And that was the reason for the safety question, is how can we, if we had a certification, how can we actually, what do we test, and what do we grade, and those kinds of things to do that.
Speaker 5
29:03
So anyway, but the education. Yeah, we like to use the Weston A. Price Foundation literature for our customers, so there's a
Speaker 8
29:12
pamphlet on safe raw milk storage and production where they pick up the milk if they want
Speaker 5
29:19
to, you know, take that loaner copy and read it. Also, I thought the bill did a good job of ensuring truth in labeling when people buy the product that they're not thinking they're getting pasteurized milk. They know they're getting raw milk.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
29:34
Yeah, and I agree with that. I just think that there are a lot of folks that just don't understand what pasteurization does and what raw means, so and that may be what the health department
should be doing instead of harassing or whatever but yeah yeah thank you yes ma'am thank you representative
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
29:58
richmond sorry to have another question actually this question is for you
representative cooper in that during this process do you recall the help you know because he stated that the health department said it would be too expensive to do this type of inspections and stuff for all the different raw milk producers do you recall any financial impact statement or any kind of actual numbers that the health department provided to support their claim of being too expensive and why the expense
would be so much higher i think mr ballard you were referencing
Speaker 83
30:36
the original raw milk legislation which i think was in 2013. so before
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
30:42
i was here maybe before you were here that was before i was here too do you have any impact did they provide any data
Speaker 10
30:50
anything that you can remember uh not that i'm aware of but i wasn't
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
30:54
really paying attention back then okay follow-up question follow-up questions for you you said you've got 40 acres correct yes sir and now you have what 12 cows that's right on this your your feed production
i mean 40 acres doesn't produce a whole lot of hay or anything even though people in the city thinks it's a monumental amount of acreage how do you how do you uh feed your cattle and and make sure that they've got plenty of hay and plenty of fuel
Speaker 5
31:25
to get through the whole year yeah yeah we we rent pasture for dry cows and replacement heifers and then cut
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
31:33
hay on the halves with neighbors do you another follow-up do you do any uh do your cattle do you also have calves and stuff
from your cattle and do you do like artificial insemination or do you actually seek out a bull we have
Speaker 59
31:48
we have a herd bull okay yes all right thank
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
31:54
you senator gilmore thank you mr chair and i think this will be my last time in the queue but uh i appreciate this committee and i think it's been informed thus far so
just a couple of questions um where do you sell what's your market do people come to the farm to buy it do you take it to farmers markets do you sell in stores walk me through that
Speaker 5
32:16
yes sir we have on farm sales um
and that's the cheapest because we don't have to transport it and so we also have two retail locations that we sell it for a few dollars more per gallon and we deliver two times a week there and then we have a herd share batch of customers that we deliver two once a week
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
32:39
okay so i also believe in people having the freedom and liberty to choose what they want in this case raw milk if that's what they so choose and um supported the bill because of that
reason also obviously there are always concerns when you're selling products like this right um it's been mentioned already things like salmonella or listeria e-collar whatever it might be um do you track that from your customers let's just say and i presume none of your customers have gotten sick from drinking your drinking your milk but i also assume that maybe you track that or at least have some way to get that feedback or do you i mean all of my customers have my
Speaker 10
33:20
phone number so i'm sure i would hear about it if there was a i would i would think
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
33:27
but you you don't know of any such an instance where someone yeah no sir yeah okay um because i do i do think it's maybe not as common as people assume it is um obviously pasteurization has its purpose Louis Pasteur had a good idea back way back when um but obviously you know there's other health benefits and things to drinking raw milk and people recognize that and choose to do it for those reasons but um I do think that's why it's important to have
standards and ensure cleanliness and you know utter you know cleanliness and keeping the teats clean and all those kinds of things are all you know very important and I presume in the industry amongst your peers they all do that or do you do you you don't have to name names but do you know of instances
Speaker 88
34:17
where that maybe is not the case amongst some of your peers every everyone
Speaker 5
34:23
that that i know personally is selling to the raw milk market and so it's it keeps them honest because
their customers wouldn't buy it if it if it didn't taste good and it won't taste good if they don't do those sanitary
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
34:36
practices yeah so i guess my point in asking that is to say then you believe that market forces ensure that yes sir yeah okay
Speaker 5
34:48
the producer and the consumer should be what dictates price not not the government or the milk stabilization board or yeah okay so i guess
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
34:59
then my question i know i've taken some liberty here mr chair but
but I appreciate the latitude. I then presume that a certification or a standard or whatever, you know, it might end up being that we're talking about here today. You don't consider that in any sort of way of getting involved in the free market, if you will. You just think it's a way to enhance your product and prove to people that you're, you know, living to a certain standard or providing
Speaker 10
35:36
Yeah. And giving access to other opportunities with the USDA for grants and things like that, for inspected.
Speaker 5
35:45
And I think it's important that that be an optional thing. I know farmers that don't want to deal with customers at all and are happy to sell all their milk to the milk truck. and i know custom my i know fellow producers that love to just talk with their customers and don't want to deal with any type of government entity but there are those of us that want to maybe
Speaker 10
36:15
have access to government grants that that require certification yeah yeah well i i think
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
36:23
dealing with cows oftentimes is a lot easier than doing with people so yeah thank you thanks for being
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
36:33
here thanks for your time thank you representative rye yes sir thank you thank you mr chairman and mr ballard we really do appreciate you and your wife being here you know um let me ask you this is there any rules as far as black and white rules that you go by from the time that you start with the cow to you end up drinking the milk do we have anything out
there that we, you know, for an instruction on what
Speaker 6
37:03
that I'm aware of. There are several organizations that publish, like, best practice guidelines, like the West and A. Price
Speaker 10
37:10
Foundation and the Raw Milk Institute. Yes, sir. That would be a good thing, because you really do need this in black and white,
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
37:18
probably. Especially for farmers that starting out haven't had a background in it. Yes,
Speaker 6
37:23
sir. Thank you, sir. And thank you, Mr. Chairman
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
37:33
Representative Barnes Thank you chair My question is this I believe one of the reasons probably not allowing you to sell outside of the city or whatever is because they're trying to block collateral damage. Let me ask this here. Do you think there should be some type of training for
dairy farmers if you're going to be given that right to sell because of the potential damage of getting someone sick because when you look at it you say you do you follow those safety measures there's no guarantee that everybody does so should not there be some training if you're going to be given that privilege to sail
Speaker 13
38:35
outside I think the option of providing training is always good but I don't
Speaker 8
38:42
think mandating farmers check a box will be a good outcome all the producers I know would probably go past whatever standard is published I do see the need to ensure people are doing the right thing but in
Speaker 5
39:07
my experience the consumer is the best one to gauge whether or not that producer is doing the right thing as the law
currently states the producer can or the the buyer can inspect the producer's facilities that's not the case with the commercial dairy most commercial dairies are not going to allow somebody to to come inspect where they're buying the milk from so i think that holds the producer to a higher standard because the buyer is there in front of them okay thank you
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
39:50
representative richmond i'm sorry mr chair but uh again some of these questions caused me to want to ask you a question about that i mean you're talking about uh a system of inspections you want it to be voluntary correct yes sir on this and that the problem i see in in in the long pole in the tent has come out of a couple other questions here is that okay mission creep well yeah we're going to come out and inspect now we're going to come out and we're going to have training
you need to attend this training thing as a matter of fact you need it's going to cost you a hundred dollars right to take this training course and we're not going to come out and inspect you unless you've taken this training course and then we're going to need to issue you a license based on the training and the inspection and and it just keeps getting government just keeps elbowing their way in it until that's all you have is government and and frankly most of you guys do it the way you do so you don't have to put up with government and bureaucrats and people who
literally don't know which end the feed goes in and which end the crap comes out telling you how to do your job would you agree that that is a concern for all of you guys is mission creep bureaucrats deciding that they know better yeah and and substituting bureaucracy
Speaker 10
41:23
for common sense right yeah legislating by regulation is what i'm afraid of but at
Speaker 5
41:28
the same time we there it seems that there's there's already a lot of that so I'm
Speaker 10
41:40
not sure where the where the line is that makes sense
Speaker 5
41:47
but like the Chevron doctrine and the EPA that fight between the legislature and the executive agencies is always going to be there I think so the question for y'all is what mechanisms do you have to hold the Health Department accountable or not or how does that practice all work because
Speaker 8
42:04
there's always going to be that tension between the branches which is the way it's supposed to be but those that
Speaker 6
42:15
aren't accountable by being elected should be directed by you guys that are elected in in my opinion well my concern about
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
42:24
accountability for bureaucrats is that it's like trying to hold on to an eel it's pretty
slippery and hard to hold on to and that frankly ultimately you guys are the ones that gets stepped on yeah on this
government and that's what i don't want to happen here so i'm just caution you be very careful yeah thank you sir
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
42:51
there are no further questions and i want to extend our appreciation for you and mrs ballard being here for those that don't know or don't remember mrs ballard and her and your daughter came and testified last legislative session on one of the raw milk bills and i think your daughter was heavily involved in ffa if i remember correctly and so we appreciate your help with that my home county has several raw milk producers i'm familiar with and in contact with and i'll just say that they they are above board on cleanliness
the last thing that they would want to do or any raw milk producer would want to do is causing you anybody to be sick so i think they go above and beyond what those standards are and we have several health food stores now in searcy and bb in white county that are selling products from local farmers and so it has really helped out our local farmers and helped them make a living so they don't necessarily have to work a second or a third job they can just focus on doing what they love and that's farming so if we have no further questions we appreciate you all being here and
you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting if you want to thank you sir thank you thanks next on the agenda we have mr. Terrence Bolden the founder of TLB Enterprises Incorporated if you would come to the table and identify yourself and you'll be welcome to present your information to us.
Speaker 119
44:55
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Chairman Cooper, I'm happy to be before the Legislative
Speaker 120
45:22
Committee today on agriculture to talk about, I think, something that is very important when it comes
to food security, workforce opportunities, new tech ag, and training for the next generation of agriculture. If we're talking about food insecurity, Arkansas leads the nation in many of those areas, which is shocking if you think about this being an agricultural state. However, I grew up on a farm in Long Oak County. Dad was one of
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the largest farmers in that area. And we know ag in this state. And I think the time has
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come for farm to table
seed to mouth to look at other approaches to how we grow food, given some of the challenges that we see. I think it's good for farmers, it's good for ag, and I think it's going to be good for jobs in the future. Tell a little bit about me. I, as I said, grew up in in the Long Oak County in Arkansas Delta, basically just the bottom part of that. We call it the flatland. Looking at my background, I spent quite a bit of time
working in New Tech. We do work with university systems, training for young people moving jobs of the future into the now. That's happened with AI. It sounds backwards, but the jobs of the future are now. And so we believe that in ag, we have that same opportunity, especially as it relates to killing food deserts and offering opportunities to get us out of
food insecurity, especially in rural and urban core communities where we don't have grocery stores. We have Dollar Generals, or these fast food restaurants, or in many cases, just a convenience store. So my background is to create opportunities where we see we can scale that growth, develop those solutions for problems that exist like food deserts within communities. I spent quite a bit of time with NASA, the Kennedy Space Center, in 2009 to 2019, working
on solutions for food production, even on the International Space Station that we could use on Earth. So what we were doing in the United Arab Emirates at that time, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, was looking at ways that we could grow food in space, but because of the requirement from the government, we had to figure out how to do that same thing on the ground. so that the dollars would travel further. And so that was some of the early work that we did to get to where we are today with hydroponic farming,
where we're converting and retro-converting shipping containers and grow houses into hydroponic farms. We're mainly focused, again, on farm-to-table, the main staple foods that we eat every day. A lot of us know that the way food is grown today, with some of the challenges that we face, A lot of challenges that come through chemicals, other issues that we have can make its way into the food system. Obviously, we have inspections. We have the FDA, USDA, other groups that look into how that food chain is secured.
But when it comes to food security, that's not something that they dictate or food insecurity. That's dictated by the market, and that's dictated by farmers and other groups and organizations that believe in ways that we can build clean food systems, jobs of the future,
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and ways to grow food that kills the insecurity that we find ourselves
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in. So one of the things that, when we talk about areas of expertise,
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if we're talking about anything that has to do
with taking away cost from the consumer, scaling and integrating solutions that are 360-degree food loop of basically integration from funding to energy to water to food. We obviously can't have a discussion about energy unless we're talking about water, and we can't have a discussion with food unless we're talking about energy and water and the cost thereof. So these systems that we're talking about require five gallons of water per day and less than anything you can think of in terms of acreage to produce the same amount of food.
One of these containers can produce up to 160,000 bunches of lettuce per year, a 40-foot container with less than 50 percent food loss. So we're talking about even if we lose 50 percent, we're still going to be positive at the end of the year. So that's food and water solutions along with strategic planning that integrates this technology for us to be able to do what we're talking about doing today. Some of our accomplishments that deal with work in the energy system has to do with ocean energy systems that we have patents on.
We patented with NASA and the Florida Institute of Technology back in the early and mid-2000s. We did some global institutional agreements with NASA, the university of universities that were there in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and other countries around Southeast Asia and Africa. I've led an aviation experience from Milton P. Crenshaw Aviation Training Academy, where a young lady who recently graduated back in the early 20s received the largest amount of money for a student going in to become a pilot in the history of the United States.
So we know how to do this when it comes to integrating workforce development solutions into new tech. We did over $500 million in capital improvement projects over the years, food distribution rights, and published books as well as white papers and blue papers on these particular technologies that I'm talking about today. My professional experience includes being a business owner, developing New Tech Ag through Oxford University where I worked in what we call fintech or financial technology solutions for things like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and so forth, and how you transfer those into commercial environments on bar to exchange systems, trading things like food.
So there are ways that we can do this that even makes it more economical. In working with the Milton P. Crenshaw Aviation Training Academy since 2009, I'm now the Emeritus Chairman. Of that, we work with a lot of young people in central Arkansas, around the state, and sent kids to NASA, the Florida Flight Academy over there in Pensacola, and into many of the other opportunities that we see with Delta and FedEx. So those students are now working in professional fields of aviation now. So some of the workforce pieces that tie to ag, we want to do the same thing with.
So the business network international group that I was part of when I was over in United Arab Emirates is some of the leadership skills that we highlight, and then our patents are
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held by Clean and Green Enterprises. So the companies that we started do the types of things that we're talking about with food, energy, water,
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and new tech solutions. The global impact that we're talking about could come from any number of integrated solutions that bring down costs, especially when we're talking about isolated microgrid, off-grid
solutions that do not pass that cost on to the consumer. It's borne by the project of the food production facility that's growing the food. So it's all integrated on site. It's a low energy requirement that can be done by these solutions from mainly solar or some other form of battery backup storage and production. We can also use 110-volt energy system or electrical system to produce the same energy. We did work with the U.S. Department of Energy.
We've done work with the International Renewable Energy Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with Export Bank, with Squire, Patton, and Boggs, and folks that
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has helped us work in the international marketplace. So if you look
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at an early career, I went to school at UALR in the early years,
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went through the University of Texas San Antonio, San Antonio Community College, Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service, back here to UAPB, I'm sorry, to Philander Smith, graduated from there, a business degree, and then came into what I'm doing now with a master's in leadership that we're working on, and then some of
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the new tech career development certifications
certifications for master certification in grants administration of fintech solutions and then the work that we're doing now that augments that with cleantech certifications. So just kind of look at the background some
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of the things that we've done there and professional affiliations and so forth. So I'm going
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to go ahead now and get into the direct presentation of what I'm here to talk to you about in terms of hydroponic farming and where we are with that. So if I can find that slide here we go so a bit of what that looks like you know this is a three-year
program readiness program for career development integration around drones robotics agritech and agrite business solutions using AI integrations to focus on hands-on skills industry certifications that are required and and entrepreneurial pathways to grow business anchored by a campus container that we're talking about
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here, which are retrofitted shipping containers with everything in it needed to grow the food farm-to-table. All right?
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So we own the curriculum that runs parallel to state pathways and career pathways to train young people and folks that are retraining for jobs in this area. These are put in the communities where the food deserts exist. So that people who normally would have to drive miles and miles to get to a grocery store are from Midtown over to West Little Rock. They literally can go
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to a fresh food market right there in their community and buy food at half the cost of what they would get at the grocery store when we're talking about fresh food and vegetables.
So the career readiness industry certifications allow for the workforce that we need
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because they don't exist at the levels we need right now to grow food in these containers. to do the off-taking, the packaging, meet the requirements of the FDA and the food and agriculture departments in the state. We need trained people to do that. Our pilot project is already underway here in Central Arkansas with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff doing the validations on what the claims that we make from an independent source. We're also working with the Little Rock School District with a pilot project that launched back last
December where these containers will be on site come September 1st for students to start that work in laboratories there at the school and grow food in the containers and then off take that food into the community where that school is located in Southwest. So that is a current project. Actually I was a little late getting here today because I was over in West Memphis talking to them about some of the same things. This is a statewide project we believe that we can do five food distribution hubs and kill food deserts, 80% of them across the state, with
affordable food, clean food, wholesome food that people can count on on a daily basis. So the career placement piece is very important. The entrepreneurship piece is very important where we work with farmers. We believe this is a big solution for farmers. We are a partner with the Winter Rockefeller Foundation, the Farm Bureau, partner with the Arkansas Department of Transportation for flying drones and a few other groups and organizations around
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the state including UAPB in the Laurel School District. So that pilot project will
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prove what we're saying which is the purpose of it and then we can expand that into
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full-blown commercial food production. So the program model and cadence really comes from how we work with
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students and folks that are retraining for jobs. This is a workforce development piece and this makes sense when it comes to workforce development. We're talking about jobs that pay anywhere from 16 to 30 dollars an hour. We have to compete with steel mills in West Memphis. So our different
job opportunities for high-tech jobs in other places. So these jobs are going to have to pay that. We have a food production facility we plan to open in Jacksonville in the fall. Next year, if we could get to it in the spring, we would, but we see some delays on the horizon. and we lost an opportunity with a project site that we had to redo here recently. But that's pretty much what we're talking about when we're talking about integrating workforce with the food solution opportunity because without it, we can't grow the food, I'll take it, and get it to the folks who are buying it.
The curriculum structure that we're looking at here gives us an opportunity, and I need to put on my glasses because I can't see this, gives an opportunity to look at agri-tech and agri-business solutions as the foundation of this program. So it's an introduction to agriculture, sustainable agricultural concepts, precision farming techniques, agricultural technology systems, and business planning and outcomes. That's year two. Year three is the capstone for this project, where we see students who are in the 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade,
and those that we've taken from the 11th grade to put in the workforce, actually running these programs on farms that their fathers probably never dreamed about new tech ad so when you're looking at this container farm here where we cut the side of it out so you can see what's growing in it we've done this I did this in Abu Dhabi and we now have a full-blown food production facility over there with 20 containers in one of the commercial food production sell these. You can find it on a website with the real images of it. So the future of farming is what
we're talking about here. We can either get in the now or be left behind and import from somewhere because right now being a food insecure state, where does that food come from if we're not growing it and not getting into the communities that need it at affordable price? So experiential learning and partnerships, you know, industry partners like local farms, ag tech, we're talking about not displacing farmers, not replacing farmers. We're talking about the farmers doing this work on their farms and distributing it within a 10-mile radius where we know where the fresh food pop-up markets
are, where the farmers markets are, and work-based learning can take place on the farm. So internships can happen with two-year colleges like Eastern Arkansas Community College, St. Phillips, or right Pulaski Tech. Community markets, like the one downtown Little Rock at the River Market, you know, can be used as a business-to-business supply chain offloading opportunity or others that are around the food desert communities that we can do pop-up fresh food markets on Saturdays and throughout the week. So assessments and certifications become a major portion of what
we're talking about. Competency-based assessments, we can really see what the young people know or what folks who are retraining from jobs have learned, and then we can put that to work in a practical demonstration sense with new tech agriculture. Product logs and questions and answers around hydroponic farming, what is it, what is due, how much can we grow in a given area, and we can estimate that and determine whether or not we can fill the need in a given community based on how many people buy how much food at a given time. So the digital portfolio for that has to do with actually looking at what students have
learned coming out of school what grade level are you reading on what kind of math levels can they operate at these are high skill tech based jobs but they have labor associated with them so it's a skilled labor job with high tech driving the food production and so in the end we're talking about staffing and roads whether we're talking about program directors business entrepreneurship instructors for farmers or industry mentors like what we talked to the Farm Bureau about, or the Reichland Foods, who is one of our partners here. And Rich Hillman
and I actually played basketball against each other in high school. So when he was over at the Farm Bureau, he come out of Carlisle, I come out of Humnope, we say, well, why don't we play a little bit of farming stuff together rather than football or basketball? He played football. I didn't play football. We didn't have football in my school. But we did play some basketball with each other. And so when we're looking at, you know, job opportunities, We need industry partners to believe in this and drive this. And so at the end of the day, the commercialization aspect is going to come through the farmers and networks and co-ops that we see for farmers markets, fresh food markets, and the Farm Bureau.
And so in the end, the equipment and facilities that we need rest within the technical colleges and institutes and universities and high schools. They already have it. With the Little Rock School District, we transferred a lot of assets because they're closing down hall as we know it. It's becoming more of a digital and a virtual school over to Southwest to do this AG
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program with UAPB. So at the end of the day we do have a three-year budget summary. We didn't put it in here because it's under
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NDA with a partner already. I can do this offline with anybody that needs to see it. We've got the numbers broken down but for today with this live streaming I I don't think it would be fair to our partner to show their numbers. If we've got another client that want to work with us, they may have something different. They may have a different cost structure. So we designed these and custom fit these to the market that they're in. But these are the kind of outlines of what is required. I can tell you over a five-year period,
we're talking about a $200 million to $1 billion impact if we do these five distribution hubs around the state. It just depends on how it works out. And we can't,
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you know, predict the future at that level, but I can tell you at a minimum level, we're looking at about $200 million in terms of economic impact to the communities where these food production facilities
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reside. We do have the estimate cost per student. It's not in here again because this was based on a specific school. So if you want us to give you the cost, we got to do it per area.
every school doesn't have the same as you guys know amount of money coming from the state nor have the same amount of students and the same amount of budget to be able to to do work so the more students we have the cost come down as you can imagine per student cost per school and so these are designed to help with the cafeterias in schools and they're growing food and they're learning to grow it it's good food they can use it in their cafeterias that's a cost benefit to the school district and most of the funds that we're using do
not come out of the school district current budget they come from other sources public private foundations other opportunities for generating
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revenue that school would now have as a revenue generator and a cost reduction measure rather than cost increases
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so that's what we're looking at that's my story I'm sticking to
Speaker 16
1:05:06
it. Thank you. Questions please. Representative Ennett. Thank you
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:05:15
Mr. Chairman. You had a very impressive resume there I must say. I do have a
question. My father just retired from Southwest and he has a garden there at the at the high school and he's he's my constituent so I'm asking on his behalf have so if he wanted to partner with this how do he how does he go about doing it well the rollout over at southwest has been a
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year in the making so it's just you know it's been a year and a half before we
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actually start growing the first food in the containers he would just be an automatic partner that would be in that community we've already looked at the garden the arid land how
it works what kind of off taking what time of year are they able to grow and that type of stuff But I think he just needs to contact me or Mr. Maxey over there at the school as the principal and sit down and say how he wants to work with us. You know, this is a community-based project, by the way. It's designed for the community engagement and off-taking with
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:06:15
very little cost to the community at all. Okay. Yeah, because he retired. So just if he wanted help at your other areas, you said five hubs that you're trying to open up?
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1:06:26
We're talking about northeast and northwest, southeast, southwest, and central Arkansas now. He may have
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to travel over to West Memphis. He may have to travel down to Camden or over to Monticello or up to Fort Smith.
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1:06:36
But if he wants to do that and work with us, we'll figure out a way to
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:06:40
do it. Okay. I'll give him your contact. Please. Thank
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:06:52
you. Representative Richmond. Thank you, Mr. Chair. so you spoke about existing farmers also participating in this and and then it
looks like that because of the shipping containers type system that you have that that people that don't necessarily have a bunch of acreage or anything else like represent in it was talking about with her father could also participate in this what what is your target group really is it is it everybody that wants participate or are you looking at maybe somebody that's in a community that might be struggling that they could do this to help with the uh the food supply in that community or if you're looking at the farmer helping him with again you want them to sell local sounds like when they do this
i'm just trying to figure out who the target audience is for for what you're trying to accomplish here okay so
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1:07:45
there's a target market and target audience the
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1:07:50
audience is the public whoever that is they consume food they buy food so that has to be
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1:07:57
part of our market strategy marketing public relations strategy but we're talking about buying containers it has to be who can afford it so in this case it's going to be public school systems university partners
and farmers who can afford these containers or an individual who is able to afford them. On average, these containers are going to cost somewhere between $85,000 to $130,000 to grow that kind of food. And so if you're talking about that, you can almost eliminate, as far as buying a container. Now,
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1:08:30
in terms of community development project, that's a whole different animal. We can include anybody in that. to learn how to do that.
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1:08:43
Now, there are co-ops with community members. Like with the young man that was sitting here before me was talking about where they got neighbors working with their farming and cattle and things like that. That co-op can do that. I'm talking about not an incorporated co-op. I'm talking about just a community co-op that decides that's what they want to do. And then they can provide that food there in their community. I'll give you
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1:09:07
an example. Over in Wrightsville, Wrightsville, they closed Dollar General and moved it across the expressway.
Dollar General really doesn't provide the kind
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1:09:16
of food that we're talking about. That food is not grown to maturity on the vine, and it's a very small amount. So we're talking about enough food to feed a community, farm to table. And so there's going to have to be the right partners. This is a partnership model between a public-private partnership is what we're talking about. Farmers have to be involved. Somebody like the
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1:09:37
Farm Bureau to help push that. and then communities are involved where it makes sense.
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
1:09:44
Okay, thank you. A follow-up, Mr. Chair? Also, as we all know,
the difficulty that farmers are having across this country as well as in this state, you know, they depend on overseas markets, the cost of machinery, basically just the cost of production to try to get food to the table, and then all of us that go to a grocery store or anything else, We're expecting that food to be cheap and plenty of it and everything, which, you know, also has its own difficulties.
But the economic sustainability of what you're doing. I see, you know, $100,000, just throw that as a general number, to get these containers and things like that. That's a pretty significant investment. How is it – how do you think – because, frankly, our farmers depend really on the farm bill now. in so many ways that the federal government putting money down through the system to put it out there to keep them sustainable economically because it's just so expensive, everything that they do, everything they buy.
How is this going to help the economic
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1:10:55
stability of farmers? How much time you got? This is a business plan exercise that we're talking about now. So $100,000 sounds like a lot of money, But if I said 160,000 bunches of lettuce at 99 cents, it's 160 grand. They just made $60,000 the first year and it's paid for. Very little maintenance costs, very little water. We're talking about five gallons of water a day. You can't produce that on an acre of land.
And you're going to use thousands of gallons of water to try to get there and electricity. There's no competition here between what we're talking about with economics. It goes away. If we're
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1:11:35
talking about in food deserts where driving vehicles, miles, travel, gas, all these kind of things to cost to the consumer, that goes away with fresh food pop-up markets. So in most cases, we're talking about something like the Farm Bureau Bank helping that farmer, which is what we talked to them about, get to a point either through leasing those containers and the Farm Bureau Bank owns them, or if they're a farmer that's in a position that can do it.
I think if, being an old farm boy, if you go look at what farmers pay for seeds, equipment and tractors, they find a way to finance that, right, if they're going to be an entrepreneur or a business person. We're not talking about anything different here. So if they're financing their equipment, this is equipment. It's equipment calls to produce food. So there's no different than a tractor in one of these containers. The tractors used to help cultivate, plant, do whatever it takes to grow that food to
get it to market, pull whatever it's pulling, same thing. Here everything is self-contained and it's harvested right out of the
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1:12:46
container and it goes to a fresh food pop-up market within 10 miles. That's all
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
1:13:08
we're talking about here. Thank you Mr. Chairman, a very good presentation.
Could you elaborate a little more about food deserts, we hear that term a lot here. as it relates to your proposed locations? Where are these food deserts as it relates to different parts of the state? And then I have a follow-up question. Good question, Tracy.
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1:13:32
I think, Representative Steele, I think I know for a long time it slipped out. I'm
Speaker 120
1:13:38
sorry about that. The question goes to the heart of where people are suffering the most.
Speaker 121
1:13:47
First, I can take from, let me use Little Rock, okay. I can take from Main Street, downtown Selma,
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1:13:56
just south of downtown, where there's an Edwards
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1:14:00
Food Market. Go to 630 or to the Heights. Go
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1:14:04
to Roosevelt. Go all the way to Barrow Road and not find a grocery store. That's a food desert. There is no access to nutritious food within a walking distance or traveling distance that makes sense.
You've got to get to Walmart. You've got to get to Edwards either at 36th and Barrow. I mean, I'm Colonel Glenn. Or you've got to get all the way to Roosevelt or to Main Street and 17th to get to food. Every food store has closed in that area in the past. That's true across the country. So it created food desert situations where people couldn't get to affordable food that's nutritious within a reasonable radius of travel.
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1:14:53
So that is a food desert where we cannot find food that's
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1:14:58
easily accessible to be consumed on a daily basis. What that means is children and elderly people, that
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1:15:05
health care costs increase, challenges with growth, growing up the way you want a child to grow up in those areas become a
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1:15:14
big problem. So we increase health care costs somewhere between 30% to 45% when there's a food desert as to when they're not.
So there's a cost to the state that's transferred on as a result of health care alone that's increased because people are less healthy. Is your second part of
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
1:15:39
your question? Yes. As a follow-up, Mr. Chairman, I wanted to know in the containers, one, how soon will you have one up? because I think it would be a great opportunity to come out and actually view it.
You mentioned where you were first exposed to these containers. Does the military participate in this container concept at all anywhere? I certainly see some benefits. And to wrap it all up, what are the benefits for the actual student? And would this be a part of the curriculum where you are partnering with, like, Southwest High School and other schools? Thank you. Okay, I'll take
Speaker 124
1:16:20
those one at a time. So, first, I was exposed to these
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1:16:25
overseas when I was living in Dubai.
I was the distribution director for the development of these when they rolled out in 2012.
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1:16:33
And so, in 2014, when we started growing food in them and was taken over by the United Arab Emirates government as our client, They regulated it at that point and took it underneath the umbrella of the government with a public-private partnership, okay, with sovereign wealth funds and the government and then the private partner. That same partner is with me today.
We opened up something in Florida called Stud Peg Musa, which is a manufacturing facility that we're moving toward to do shipments out of
Speaker 120
1:17:10
the country into South America over in Mexico. So we're selling U.S.-made product at that point. here is our food distribution hub and sales unit from that partnership and it
Speaker 123
1:17:23
allows us to work with any group that does food production or off-taking whether that be a grocery store
a restaurant in a local
Speaker 120
1:17:35
area or you know families so in terms of the curriculum We did work with the State Department of Education, Little Rock School District, to align our curriculum components with that of the State Department of Education. So anything that we're doing falls underneath the CTE programs, career technical and educational training programs that run parallel for job opportunities and career skills development like in metropolitan schools over here.
where they do a lot of that career and technical training and development. Any school that has these systems as part of their school system, growing habits or training, obviously the curriculum
Speaker 123
1:18:24
has to align with state curriculums to be inside of a school. Otherwise,
Speaker 120
1:18:31
we wouldn't be able to do that. But that is a public-private partnership at that point, where entrepreneurship, new farm techniques, College tracks for somebody like UAPB, University of Arkansas, Pulaski Tech may be involved for culinary school,
other supply chain and other industries that are not direct farming or a new tech ag. Drones and robotics, give you an example. In Ohio in August last year, one contract, ag and drones, $900 million, to a business. All
Speaker 123
1:19:03
right. So that is the potential that
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1:19:10
we have. Arkansas has probably, when we did the research and opened our drone company here, to work with ag because we could see they had to go together,
which is one of the career pathways that runs underneath this ag program. It has the most favorable, we think, drone regulation in the country, and there's a burgeoning drone market here that a lot of people don't even know about or don't talk about, but it should be used with ag and how we do new tech ag in order for surveillance, data collections, monitoring of flooding and these kind of things, or water tables and so forth. So I think that there's a
Speaker 123
1:19:52
whole opportunity here to align with curriculums and career pathways and jobs,
which is why we're saying this is job creator. One of these containers creates four jobs. You've got to have somebody to package. You've got to have somebody to grow and monitor and do the tech part and testing. And then you've got to have somebody to drive and deliver or manage the commercial side. And then you need somebody to do the work on the administrative end. All right. So one of these food production sites produces at least four jobs per container. And then it's a matter of if it's a family, if they want to do what we call, you know, opportunity capital and sweat, sweat equity into it.
Or if it's a business, they're going to probably want anywhere between four to twelve of these containers on their site. So it's just about what they're doing
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
1:20:45
for commercial food production or not. does that yes but mr. chairman if I might just this last point that when will
Speaker 124
1:20:52
one of these containers should be available so that's a viewer the first
Speaker 120
1:20:58
purchase order goes in this month before the 30th of June and that should be on site no later than mid mid
Speaker 123
1:21:04
August to September first so for the start of the
school year that container should be up and ready to grow food for us to harvest first food out of that container sometime in probably early november once we get everything up and the students integrated into it
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
1:21:27
so i would also think that these containers kind of take out the equation of a
Speaker 33
1:21:32
growing season as well you can grow year-round
Speaker 120
1:21:36
that's the beauty of it uh we just when i say you can't compete with new tech ag like this farm to table
because in Arkansas, when are you going to grow? You've got certain months you can grow in, and you've got to harvest, and then you're into winter or you're into a season you
Speaker 121
1:21:54
can't grow in, or you may lose the crop to any number of things. That's never going to happen in these containers. There's got to be human error that does that or something that we can't predict. But for the most part, we can control the growing yield, the environment, the temperature, the nitrogen, the oxygen, the water, and all that.
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
1:22:13
representative Barnett thank you chair and thank you mr. Bolden for your presentation I did have some questions regarding the whole idea of having five hubs I know you stated earlier that you were speaking with West Memphis and when we're talking about regional hubs are you only looking to partner with one school district in those areas or is it multiple school districts how does that
look a good question when you
Speaker 121
1:22:48
say regional that means multiple so we're talking about force we're
Speaker 120
1:22:54
talking about Arkansas Delta okay Memphis being the driving for West Memphis being a driving force because of how much money is in that area to help support making this happen okay but for city when Mariana, Claren, and Brinkley, Wheatley, that entire corridor through there in
Critton County and around would be benefiting from these and we probably have
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
1:23:22
truck to help make that happen the way it should happen. Okay I think you're kind of addressing
my next my follow-up question if I could. I know that you said that there would be pop-up markets within a 10 miles outside of those areas but I know like a school district like West Memphis School District services, rural communities that are food deserts that are beyond a 10-mile radius outside of that city limits, for instance,
like the city of Hughes, which is 25-plus miles from West Memphis. So I was just – I think when you said that about the mobile, I think that
Speaker 120
1:24:00
addresses that. Yeah, the 10-mile radius piece has to do with a fresh food pop-up market strategy, more so than a
Speaker 123
1:24:07
food delivery strategy to get it to folks. That can stretch as far as your money will go. You know, those mobile food trucks can cost anywhere from $250,000 and a half a million. So, now, if you're retrofitting an old bus or something like that, we can get it down,
you know, probably $50,000 to $75,000, and it can serve a whole area. And that might be some of the better solutions that we look at in the future when it comes to some of these rural areas in the state because it just makes sense. the budgets gonna be smaller and they may not be able to do with the city of Little Rock be it yeah
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:24:54
representative Garner thank you mr. chair and thank you for being here before I got here I had a
nonprofit for hunger relief and sustainable food systems so we've worked with hydroponics and aquaponics for a long long time so i have a whole lot of questions for you that we can get offline for but basically are you talking at you're still talking about microgreens and and lettuces and that's what you're growing in these containers are you able to grow or obviously i'm a little concerned about a protein source at some point in time so have you looked at aquaponics or all right what what else are you growing besides microgreens the
Speaker 123
1:25:30
The hydroponic farm system that we presented today was really for what's going on now. But aquaculture and aquaponics are also a part of the structure that we use. So if we're talking about protein, fish is going to be involved. You will have to look at the larger food system and how we source what
Speaker 120
1:25:53
is probably going to be gardens that we would make as an integrated solution around the feed loop
Speaker 123
1:26:02
for feeding people in a given area. Right. So that, you know, unless it's stem-based, plant-based, you know, herbs, berries, most things that you see in your salad, we're probably not going to be growing it unless we can get to a cost that makes sense. Some of these things that we grow in these containers are going to be very costly. Right. So unless you can find out how to get that cost down, it doesn't make sense to compete with rice.
Exactly. Barley, yes, we can do that. You know, fodder for animals, we can do that. But, I mean, rice, you forget it. I mean, that's rice in the foods area. I grew up in that area. We're not trying to do rice, you know. Right. But there may be, you know, opportunities for us to. This is why we have to have university partners to explore different opportunities for new tech ag that could address a problem like what you're talking about. The corporate extension service, 4-H clubs, Future Farmers of America could be involved in that process.
But that's how we get there. You know,
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:27:09
it's going to take time. Love it.
Speaker 123
1:27:11
And the energy, I assume. Yeah, the energy is low-cost energy. I mean, we're talking about we use 110 volts for these containers if we're going to use traditional electricity. Okay. Otherwise, they're going to use solar panels or a battery backup storage system or a storage power unit, depending on where they're located. You know, if they're out in the area where we have very little power, we can use – it doesn't take much power for these units.
Okay. Okay, so to run them. The key is, you know, how we back them up. Should we have a storm? Should we have, you know, those kind of things, because you can't be without power very long and maintain the growing season for that cycle. Right. But, you know, you're going to have some problems outside when it comes to insects, when it comes to storms and all that kind of stuff. Let me know what I can do to help. Absolutely. I mean, we're working with some of the hunger relief programs and food pantries and so forth. We're looking at ways that we can supply those.
UMS is going to be a partner here on the nutrition side for validating some of that data. So we've already began those discussions. I just didn't want to mention them today until we have something written in writing. Great. Like we have with everybody else. Great. Well, keep me posted. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Collier. I'm going to
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:28:19
ask you my question. Okay. I don't have anyone else in the queues.
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
1:28:39
Anybody else have a question? Representative Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you
for being here because this is a program that I'm familiar with and has been going on for a while, so I'm happy to see that you're trying to incorporate it with the school system. Do you have some level of – can you provide some areas of success that you've seen in the partnerships with local school districts or other school districts?
I know you said you worked with this program over in United Arabites, or Emirates, I think. You could say Dubai. Dubai, in Dubai. And I know that at one point, you know, 10 or 12 years ago, there was a big push to do this. We call it container farming alongside of urban farming where we're really trying to maximize footprints to feed those families in those low to middle income areas. So I'm just curious to know if you've got any data that shows the start.
Well, you probably can't say that here. Maybe I can get you outside and talk to you about pure startup costs for the container. You also talked about it providing four jobs. I want to dig into that a little bit offline, if you don't mind. But if you've got any success stories of where it's actually been implemented and seen the growth and the impact in an area,
Speaker 120
1:30:02
do you have any of that? Okay. Again, this is a pilot project for here in the state. So the only other opportunity that I've seen this in the state, they actually got it from us when we presented at the Farm Bureau Conference and presented this concept in 2021, just after COVID, with a group out of Boston that brought over to the lighthouse a container.
They didn't continue to grow. It's just dormant. Now, in Orlando, the city of Orlando, where our container is, they're growing that container. So you can go out on my website and see that container. It is a high-end pilot project for doing new tech food growing within inner-city urban areas. That one is located in a low-income community there in Orlando. As a matter of fact, I just got a call from USDA the other day about a new grant that they're submitting,
and they asked me what needed to be redacted in my document. that was proprietary so that's an example right there in terms of what's going on that's done in combination with a local food group market and an a garden a community garden that they have right next door to it which is similar to Southwest they got a garden out back as well that's what she
Speaker 131
1:31:23
was she was talking about mr. Bolton we
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
1:31:31
appreciate you being here and giving us this
presentation is very interesting I enjoyed it very much I think the entire committee did I think what representative steel might have been getting at is when he was asking when one of these may be available for a visit you know maybe the committee could could come see that whenever that's up maybe the full committee this is a subcommittee of AG of the AG committee Maybe the full ad committee could
come for a tour of one of these mobile growing stations whenever
Speaker 119
1:32:00
that's available to see. Yeah, we plan
Speaker 120
1:32:02
to have the one out at Southwest up, and probably over on UAPV's campus we'll have a couple of them in the fall.
So what we'd like to talk about with you guys, too, is the job creation. I think that piece and how we do technical training, we can't wait for the containers to get here to do the skills training. Those individuals have to be in place. And that's a big challenge for businesses to carry the expense
Speaker 123
1:32:29
of, you know, preparing the technical and core training, which is why we're doing it in partnership with school districts, two-year colleges and universities. It just makes sense, you know, as well as research that goes along with that.
So we've done some work with the Cooperative Extension Service over the last two or three years to prepare to come in here. It's been a long process. I mean, if we hadn't had COVID, you'd be visiting the site off Stagecoach Road that didn't go up. COVID hit, and we had to shut that down. Well, again, we thank you for being here.
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
1:33:03
I don't see any other business on our agenda and no more questions, so we will stand adjourned today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by Chairs
C. Consideration to Approve the October 27, 2025, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit C]
D. Discussion of Hydroponic Farming in Agriculture and Food Production [Exhibits D1 and D2]
E. Discussion of Success of Dairy Production in Arkansas [Exhibit E]
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Cameron Cooper
Unverified
Speaker 5
Speaker 8
Speaker 13
Chair
Unverified
Representative Bruce Cozart
Unverified
Speaker 6
Representative Marcus E. Richmond
Unverified
Speaker 10
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 27
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Representative Jon S. Eubanks
Unverified
Speaker 61
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 83
Speaker 59
Speaker 88
Speaker 96
Representative Glenn Barnes
Unverified
Speaker 119
Speaker 120
Speaker 121
Speaker 124
Speaker 126
Speaker 123
Speaker 129
Speaker 16
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 142
Speaker 148
Speaker 149
Speaker 151
Speaker 33
Speaker 104
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
Representative R. Scott Richardson
Unverified
Speaker 131
Speaker 153