Fellow Farmers,
We write today as the Chairmen of the House and Senate committees on Agriculture and as state legislators. More importantly, we write to you as Georgia farmers who have had the unique experience of witnessing the intersection of governmental policy and the effects those policies can have on our family farms.
We both fight in Atlanta every day during the legislative session, not only on behalf of your family’s farming operation, but also our own as well as every farm family in the state of Georgia. In the environment under the Gold Dome, we learn pretty quickly who has the backs of our state’s farm families and rural Georgia. We can tell you unequivocally that Lt. Governor Burt Jones has been a steadfast friend to agriculture and rural Georgia. Even during times when it would’ve been easier, and perhaps even more politically prudent to go in a different direction, he has stood by and fought for the interests of the agriculture industry and farming families in both his former role as a State Senator and now as Lt. Governor. Whether it be helping us to bring parity for our farmers in terms of truck weights in relation to surrounding states, helping to get funding for agriculture research, fighting for more disaster funding to help rural farming communities after Hurricane Helene, taking the tough positions to protect the plant protection products we need to produce the food that fuels the nation, reaching out personally to our friends in Washington D.C. at the highest levels in the fight to bring relief to the skyrocketing H2A wages we’ve been suffering under over the last several years; the list just goes on and on.
Lt. Governor Jones also secured the final passage this year of HR 1416, which will create a joint House and Senate Study Committee on Generational Sustainability of Family Farms, which we sponsored and carried in our respective chambers. We believe this committee’s work this year will be a springboard to the General Assembly’s continuing efforts to support Georgia’s agriculture industry and to make farming a more profitable and attractive profession for generations to come.
Between the two of us, our families have been farming in Georgia for over 12 generations. Burt and his family have farmed on the same land in Butts County for six generations. We may be the Chairmen of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees in the Georgia General Assembly while the legislature is in session, but we are always full-time farmers. Production Agriculture is how we both support our families and have for generations. More than anything else, it is our sincere hope to keep our family farms alive and pass them down to the next generation. The family farm is a promise that you make to those who came before you, and it’s a covenant you keep for those coming behind you. Georgia’s next Governor needs to be someone who will fight to help us keep that covenant for our children and grandchildren who will be the next generation of Georgia farmers. We both know, without a doubt in our hearts, that Burt Jones is the person we trust most to fight for our family farms and yours too. That is why we are supporting him in his campaign to be our next Governor and humbly ask you to join us in doing the same.
May God bless your families, your farms, and our shared future.
Your friends,
Robert Dickey, Chairman
House Committee on Agriculture and Consumer Affairs
Russ Goodman, Chairman
Senate Committee on Agriculture and Consumer Affairs
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