West Virginia’s Department of Agriculture says plans have been written for managing fertilizer and other nutrients on 90,000 acres in the state’s eight-county Chesapeake Bay drainage region.
Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt says West Virginia is furthest along among the bay’s watershed states toward the goal, which helps restore land for productive use.
The plans document practices and strategies by livestock operations to address soil erosion, manure, disposal of other organic waste and fertilizer applications.
Excesses can contaminate groundwater.
According to the department, nutrient management plans were written for many poultry operations beginning in the mid-1990s, but a decision was made in 2010 to start over.
Leonhardt says the region’s farmers who implement plans in the voluntary program deserve recognition while other states have established regulatory programs with punishment for non-compliance.
The West Virginia Department of Agriculture is offering help for people who spot a swarm of honeybees.
Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt says bees are an important part of the growing season, and people who spot a swarm on their property are asked to call the agency so the insects can be relocated rather than eradicated.
Apiarist Wade Stiltner of the agency says honeybees swarm when they are forming a new colony. The department says warm spring weather delivered an abundance of blossoms early, a situation that may trigger swarming.
Anyone who sees a swarm can contact the department at (304) 558-2212. The agency has a list of beekeepers that will retrieve the swarm and find a new location for the bees.
West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt is kicking off International Maple Month in the state with a ceremonial maple tapping this week in Guthrie.
The Agriculture Department says the event is set for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Gus R. Douglass Agriculture Center.
Leonardt said in a news release that more than 30 maple producers are making products ranging from maple syrup to maple cotton candy.
The event kicks off a month of activities around the state, including the second annual Mountain State Maple Day on March 18.
Each legislative session, the state’s Constitutional Officers, or the heads of government offices who are elected by the people, bring their priorities to lawmakers and ask for support for various legislative changes.
This year, newly elected Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt is hoping to change the structure of government, expand a growing program that’s been controversial in some parts of the country, and incentivize the purchasing of West Virginia-grown products.
Elected in November, Leonhardt ran on a platform of finding new niche agricultural products to put West Virginia on the map. And House Bill 2453 just might provide a boost for that product.
During the 2015 legislative session, lawmakers, including Leonhardt who was a member of the state Senate at the time, voted to make it easier for researchers in the state to get a permit to grow industrial hemp.
It’s a plant in the cannabis family that is illegal to grow because of federal drug laws. Hemp has a much lower level of THC, the mind-altering drug of other cannabis plants like marijuana, and can be used to create any number of products.
“They make purses out of it, they tell me that the body armor you make out of it can be stronger than Kevlar,” Leonhardt said. “There are thousands of products out there that people talk about using.”
But state law currently only allows researchers taking part in university studies to grow hemp. House Bill 2453 would change that though, allowing the agriculture commissioner to provide licenses to commercial growers as well.
West Virginia-grown hemp that’s going to be turned into a variety of products has to stay in West Virginia, though. Because the plant is an illegal substance under federal law, it can’t be shipped across state lines.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, according to Leonhardt, who said a fresh crop could attract new businesses and manufacturing jobs, but it poses a small problem.
“It’s a little bit of the chicken and the egg and the cart before the horse kind of thing,” he said. “You have to get the growers to grow it, but then you also have to have the manufacturers come in.”
“So, there’s going to be a little bit of a challenge there, but I believe we can work our way through it.”
Leonhardt is backing another bill that he says poses a similar problem, — the West Virginia Fresh Food Act. The bill will also be discussed by members of the House Agriculture Committee today and would require all state-funded institutions, like schools and prisons, to purchase 20 percent of their fresh produce from in-state farmers.
“It’s helping create a market for fresh foods in West Virginia,” he said. “We’re obviously importing more than we’re growing.”
Leonhardt’s interview begins at the 20 minute mark.
But Leonhardt said that could change if farmers had steady buyers to produce for. Again, the chicken and the egg, but Leonhardt said he’s working with privately owned regional aggregation centers to make sure those supplies are there should lawmakers choose to move the bill forward.
Leonhardt is also asking lawmakers to consider restructuring state government to bring the Division of Forestry under his authority. The commissioner said trees should be considered a crop, one that just takes slightly longer to grow.
“When you look at what’s happening with our state’s resources, we’re one of the most forested states in the nation, we’re number 3, and we’re number 2 in hardwoods per square mile,” he said. “We’re growing trees at a rate of 2.5 times the rate of harvest, which means we could harvest our trees at twice the rate we currently are and not lose our natural beauty.”
The bill is likely to draw pushback from some environmental groups who disagree with Leonhardt’s assessment that trees are a crop, but Gov. Jim Justice has also pushed to increase timbering to revitalize the furniture manufacturing industry in the state.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has picked Republican Charles Clements to fill a state Senate opening left by Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt’s election.The governor’s office says Clements is a former member of the state House of Delegates. Clements currently serves as executive director of the West Virginia Route 2 and I-68 Authority and was on the governor’s transition policy committee on transportation.
Leonhardt, a Republican, left the 2nd District Senate seat by winning the agriculture commissioner race in November.
Clements served in the U.S. Army and owned Clements Oil Company for 34 years. He has operated H&R Block in New Martinsville since 2004.
The 2nd Senate District covers all of Wetzel, Tyler, Doddridge, Ritchie and Calhoun counties and parts of Marshall, Monongalia, Marion and Gilmer counties.
When voters go to the polls on November 8th, they’ll be tasked with deciding who will lead the state’s agriculture industry. The two major party…
When voters go to the polls on November 8th, they’ll be tasked with deciding who will lead the state’s agriculture industry. The two major party candidates see the Commissioner of Agriculture as someone who can diversify the state’s economy, but have different opinions about what that diversification looks like.
Walt Helmick is seeking his second term as Agriculture Commissioner. His competition is Republican Kent Leonhardt and Libertarian Buddy Gurthrie.
Helmick has held public office since 1988 when he was first elected to the House of Delegates. In 1990, he was elected to the state Senate, serving in a variety of leadership roles, including as Finance Committee chair. He held the position until he became Agriculture Commissioner in 2012. Helmick said during his time in the office, he’s focused on diversifying the state’s economy through agriculture and he wants to make sure the programs he’s started continue.
“This is the first time we’ve seen movement in agriculture in West Virginia in almost 100 years now and we have structure in place that’s going to move this state forward, we’re going to be a part of diversification of our economy,” Helmick said.
Helmick has worked to improve or create Farm to Table and Farm to School efforts across West Virginia–local programs that coordinate with small farmers to get local food into schools, businesses, and in the average West Virginian’s kitchen.
Helmick also began a potato pilot project that’s headed into its third year. The Department of Agriculture is working with and supplementing 37 potato growers on the western side of the state. Helmick hopes to have a million pounds grown in the next year.
As part of the potato growing program, the department is in the process of developing aggregation centers to help clean and process the potatoes for selling. So far, they’ve opened one in Huntington in an old National Guard Armory building, but Helmick said they could have as many as two more up and running in the next year in Beckley and in Belle in Kanawha County.
Eventually, the sites will be used to do more than just process potatoes, but will clean and package other crops as well.
Helmick said each aggregation point costs the state about a half a million dollars to start. The Department of Agriculture’s budget has been cut by more than 3 million dollars in the past few years, but Helmick said these centers are still a good investment. The Department of Agriculture pays for them with money generated from the severance taxes earned on department owned land.
“We put that money that we generate off timber sales and the selling of natural gas and we put it into our aggregation points,” Helmick said.
But Republican candidate Kent Leonhardt says the potato growing program just can’t work in West Virginia. Leonhardt lost to Helmick in 2012 and ran a successful race in 2014 for state Senate. That’s where the Monongalia County farmer and retired Marine currently serves as the chair of the Senate Military Committee and the Vice Chair of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
Leonhardt also believes the state’s next agriculture commissioner should be looking to diversify the economy through farming, but says growing products like potatoes, products that other states are already successfully growing and selling in bulk nationwide, isn’t the right direction for West Virginia.
“What we need to do is capitalize on niche marketing, I visited a small farm that’s exporting duck eggs from West Virginia,” Leonhardt said. “They found a niche market and those are the types of businesses we need to encourage.”
Aside from just potatoes, Helmick is also working to encourage growth in the state’s beef industry, but a recent department purchase of cattle caused some controversy. The Department of Agriculture bought four angus beef cows from an out-of-state auction which Helmick said will be used to breed new cattle in West Virginia, but Leonhardt calledthe purchase a misuse of government funds and went as far as calling on a legislative committee to investigate the purchase and perform a full audit of the department.
“The people out there are telling me that we want some accountability in government,” Leonhardt said.
Leonhardt’s call for an audit was also supported and publicized by the West Virginia Farm Bureau. Helmick said the cattle controversy is just election season politics.
“We welcome any type of inquiry into our department or into anything that we do,” Helmick said. “I’ve been very clear about it over the years. We’ve been cut $3.2M and then stripped of our special revenue accounts, but we have to be innovative and elections happen.”
Helmick said West Virginians purchase more than $7 billion worth of food each year, but only produce about $1 billion worth of those products. The next commissioner, he said, should be looking to increase that number and both candidates are confident they can.
