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The Georgia General Assembly is close to wrapping up for the year, but several bills impacting agriculture are still in play. We caught up with Will Bentley with the Georgia Agribusiness Council to learn more.
Bentley said, “The Senate passed their version of the FY27 budget, which now has been submitted back to the House. They disagreed with their changes, so we’re headed to a conference committee, which is not unusual. Pretty much happens every year. So the conferees will get together and work out the differences between the House and the Senate and make sure their changes are good with the governor’s office.”
“There’s some good things that we’re trying to keep in that budget. There was some money put in to the Department of Ag for emerging threats to crops when it comes to pests. I know Chairman Sam Watson was passionate about getting some money in there for a pepper weevil that’s an emerging threat to some of the fruit and veg farms in South Georgia, dealing with some other stuff, dealing with the cotton jacket that we saw popped up. Some good money for University of Georgia research and some money for the feral hog program. So that’s kind of what’s left, kind of the biggest things out there. There is a forestry bill, HB1085, dealing with transferable tax credits that we’re in a major support of, working with our friends at the Forestry Association,” said Bentley.
“So all in all, been a very positive year for agriculture and hoping to close it out without there being any accidental harm done to our industry too, which is always a fear as you get into these late evenings as bills start coming out and things are added to different bills that they weren’t originally on and don’t go through the committee process. So that’s what we’ll be doing now is keeping an eye on things to make sure we don’t get hurt at this point,” said Bentley.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.