Agriculture, Forestry & Economic Development- House

Shepherd. Matthew Shepherd, District 97. This is my 8th term in the house. I represent. El Doraida and uh most or Western Union County. Representing Bruce Cozart's my 7.5 term in the house, so just the partial term my first one, but so my 7th term, um, I don't know how many times I've been on agg, but, uh, I represent Garland County District 91, about half of Garland County, we, uh, Les Warren has the other half and Richard McGrew, uh, but, uh, I am a, a cattle rancher, uh, a small, small side. I don't have a the big herds, but, uh, and a building contractor, that's what I do on the side. Good morning, Representative McGee from Conway, I represent District 56 out of Conway, which is just mostly in the city of Conway. Uh, this is my 6th term, I think, on ag, my 7th term here uh in the house and glad to be back. I do have a lot of agricultural interests, row crop. Ground, uh, a lot of people don't know that, uh, I have a, a license from the state of Arkansas. I'm certified liquid manure application specialist. As is as is Devault, uh, go out about 8000 hogs a year, uh, and have some timber interest also and a lot of interest in the agriculture industry. Thank you. Good morning. Uh, I'm Representative David Whittaker. I represent House District 22, which is the west side of Fayetteville, all of the city of Farmington and a good bit of cattle land all the way out almost to the gates of Prairie Grove. Um, this is my 7th term in the house, and I have been, have served two previous terms on ag but had to go away for a couple of terms to uh follow a calling on some other issues, but I'll end this morning by saying, home at last. Ripped into Ron McNair, I represent District 5, which is South Boone County, uh, this is my 6th term on ag, uh, don't even own a dog, but I represent lots of farmers, uh, and I've always been blessed with them telling me what I needed to do. And, uh, I'm just looking forward to a productive and short session. Thank you. Representative Dian District 87, um, um, all of Little River County, all of Sevier County, and a portion of Howard County were Lots and lots of farmers in my area. Most of them are livestock producers. We, uh, did have a dairy, we shut down our dairy, now we're running about 1000 steers on our farm right now or it will be here shortly they'll be right around 1000. We have a hog farm and chicken houses and yes, we do have a liquid manure, uh, permit specialist. I liked that one actually, though, um, and, uh, I have a Ag Business degree and I've always had a heart for agriculture. It is the largest industry in the state of Arkansas and it's something that we should all be proud of and we should work hard to make sure that farming is uh kept alive here in our state and, uh, we got to work hard to make sure that they can keep the freedoms that, that they have to farm now. And I look forward to a good session too. Marcus Richmond, uh, this is my 6th term. I'm District 52, which is, uh, Yale County, Scott County, and Southern Sebastian County. Um, cattle and timber interest now. I started out on the farm. Dairy farm, first job was cleaning up the barnyard. And so I'm well prepared to be a politician. Thank you. I'm Carlton Wing. I represent North Little Rock and Sherwood, um, uh, this is my 4th term on agriculture and uh a lot of folks will say now how much farming do you have in your district? And I represent all of the square foot gardens in North Little Rock and Sherwood, but I do have some credentials. We were in a committee meeting and they were talking about possibly having a farmer card. To allow our farmers to be able to go sales tax free on their purchases and so I called my friends at the uh farm bureau and asked for a farmer card and so I am farmer number 0001, uh, as of right now, and I'm looking forward to my good friend Tracy Steele, who also represents North Little Rock with us. We can get a farmer card for you too, right here in central Arkansas. I'm Denise Garner from District 20 Fayetteville and again like Carlton, most people wonder what in the world somebody from Fayetteville is doing um and on agriculture, uh we do have some poultry up there in Northwest Arkansas. We do have some um sustainable local uh cottage industry, food. Uh, producers and, uh, for the last 20 years, we have, uh, I've worked in an organization to make the food system sustainable in Arkansas, so we have a restaurant with about 90% of our products being local, uh, local farmers, and, um, I'm absolutely interested in what making sure that the food system is um sustainable in Arkansas. Thank you. I'm Harlan bro. I'm in my 4th term right now. And I have most all of Carroll County and northern Boone County and uh We got a lot of chicken farms around where I live, so, uh. I'm looking forward to this and uh Looking forward, good things to happen. Stephen Walker, serving my second term now, um, I represent District 27, which is most of North Arkansas, stretches from Izard County all the way to Newton County. Uh, Chad Perrier, House District 25, Eastern Washington County, Crawford County and part of Franklin County. Matt Brown, 55, and the rest of the City of Conway that representative McGee doesn't have, and the only thing I know about ag is it's not aging children and youth. Kinder Moore District 23, which is West Washington County. This is my 2nd term. Um, my family and I have a small cow calf operation, and I am the official gate opener. Uh, Steve Unger representing District 19, my hometown of Springdale, uh, my dad's family were farmers until uh my grandfather died and then the depression wiped them out. I have cleaned out chicken houses and picked strawberries. And if you uh plow something up in Springdale, mostly what you'll get is rocks, but I do appreciate the agriculture business in our. Hi, I'm Tracy Steele, uh represent North Little Rock, the part that, uh, uh, my colleague does not represent, uh, glad to be on, on this committee. I've served uh uh many moons ago in the House and the Senate, but I have never served on the Agriculture Committee, and I've always wanted to, so glad to be here. Cameron Cooper, District 57. I live in White County. My district includes Western White County, eastern Faulkner County. Northwest Horner of Lone Oak County. It's cattle country. I grew up on a farm, uh, we've got 200 head of red angle beef cattle. Got a herd of new and dairy goats, and we also raise a few pigs. My summers as a kid were not fun, as you can imagine growing up on a farm, it wasn't all about swimming and fishing. It was baling hay and non-air conditioned tractors. You can imagine, uh, the, that dust that sticks to you, sticks to the sweat, you know, uh, picking up rocks off the hay fields. Uh, our, our meadows, that's right, cutting thistles, yeah, our meadows grew hay, but they also grew rocks. Clean the rocks up, and by the end of summer, you got to clean the rocks up again, very rocky area. But anyway, I love agriculture, um, I'm, I'm being, you know, I'm being facetious about that, my, my summers were not always fun, like I said, but it was very character building. Uh, good way to be brought up and bringing up my daughters in the same way. So glad to be on this committee. Hey dude, I'm uh Representative Jason Nazrano, District 4, which is, uh, all of Marion County and then Southern Baxter County. I'm not on agriculture. My predecessor, uh, representative, uh, Jack Fortner was the chairman. Uh, we have a lot of agriculture in our district and uh so I had uh nothing at 10 o'clock, and this is where I wanted to be to just meet the folks that are here and, and know, uh, who's going to be working uh to help our uh our district out so appreciate y'all working hard and, and making sure you keep, uh, all of our, uh, our folks in agriculture. Uh, with the best possible solutions that they've got. Thank you very much. All right. Uh, Zane Rogers, the committee analyst, um, you know, just excited to be a part of this committee. So let's take a few minutes and go around our audience here, uh. Jackie won't start? Yeah. Smith, Max Bra grass. There's a signup sheet. So right now, uh, we don't have any, any business to conduct yet, but we certainly will and. So for the committee, um, A couple of things came up during the leadership meeting yesterday afternoon. If, if we have someone at the end of the table and you have a question. And then you, you think, well, I'd like to ask another question, um, don't hesitate to do that. Go ahead and do that. I mean, we all know that, that, uh. As long as we're cordinal and we treat each other with respect, uh, you ask your questions, you know, if it goes overly long and you're, you're taking somebody else's time, I might say, you know, maybe we ought to break that and come back at the end of the meeting with other questions. Um, remember, That we'll be in this room. Off and on for the next 2 years, so please don't step on somebody else's toes any harder than you have to. Uh, you know, we all get emotional at times about issues that come up. And but remember that the next day we've got to work together again. So, let's remember that and be cordial and friendly and uh it's all right to disagree. OK. Well, we can do it in a manner that's not. Personally, uh attacking someone, OK? All right. Let's see what else we've got, uh, Quorum is 11 people and so. Normally when we start a meeting and I I rap, I wrap us in and I say the chair sees the court. All right, and then we'll, we'll get into our business, um. Agendas are prepared in accordance with House rules and are prepared 2 days in advance. Um, Sponsor notifications will be sent to members who have bills on the agenda 2 days before the committee meeting and the notices are sent by email. Uh, after a bill of resolution has appeared on the committee agenda and has been called up for consideration and a sponsor is not present, the item will be placed at the bottom of the active agenda. If a bill of resolution has been called up for consideration 3 times, it will automatically drop to the deferred list unless the sponsor notifies staff. Request to move bills from the deferred list to the active agenda must be made by 2:30 p.m. two days prior to the scheduled committee meeting. Amendments should always be in writing. Please let the staff know before the meeting if you have an admitting amendment. Um Any special order of business is set at the call of the chair and done when the sponsor of a bill requests a special meeting date or time for the committee to hear his or her bill. This is used when it, when it is a controversial bill that will have a lot of people testifying either for or against the bill or when the sponsor has people coming from out of town to speak on the bill. So y'all remember to work closely with the staff. They'll iron out all the wrinkles and make sure that, that when we come in here, we're professional and we can go through our order of business quickly. And efficiently, right? All right, my man says there's nothing else. Anybody else have something they want to add before we adjourn. May is adjourned Thank you all for coming.