UGA – College of Agriculture 
 Faced with ‘Mission Devastating’ Budget CUTS

Proposal Closes Four (4) Ag Research Stations
Cuts ½ of All County Extension Offices and Personnel
Eliminates the Georgia 4-H Club Program
Closes All 4-H Club Camps, including Rock Eagle
Plus more cuts . . .    

During a joint session of the Georgia House and Senate Higher Education Appropriation subcommittees on February 24, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents was instructed to develop a plan to reduce the Regent’s budget by an additional $300 million for fiscal year 2011.  This cut would be in addition to $265 million already proposed to be cut in the Governor’s 2011 budget.
 
The University of Georgia’s share of the $300 million cut would be $58.9 million, or 12.8% of UGA’s state budget.  Each Board of Regent Institution (including UGA) was asked to prepare a plan as to how they would meet this cut.  With no input from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences the University of Georgia identified the cuts/reductions and eliminations they would propose to the Regents.   
 
On Monday March 1, 2010 the Board of Regents released their plan to meet the $300 million cut.  It is devastating to the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
 
As noted above in the headlines, included in the UGA plan were drastic cuts for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, particularly in the Extension budget.  The proposal includes $11.66 million in cuts to Cooperative Extension or 33.3% of Extension’s state budget.  When you include cuts already sustained by Extension since 2008 this would amount to a 51.45% cut in Extension’s state budget. The Extension budget makes up 7.6% of UGA’s state budget, but the plan would require Extension to absorb 20% of UGA’s budget cut. 
 
The proposed plan also includes $816 thousand in cuts to the CAES research budget or 1.96% of their budget. The total cumulative budget reduction for Research since 2008 would be 20.43%.
 
A detailed list of the cuts that the Board of Regents are proposing for the entire University System can be accessed on the Regents website by clicking here. 
 
The proposed cuts would be devastating to the land grant mission of the University of Georgia.  The state is in a severe budget crisis but it is unfair to ask the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to take a bigger hit than other Colleges.  The proposed cuts are unreasonable and not in the best interest of the University or the citizens of Georgia.  
 
CALL TO ACTION: 
 
The fruit and vegetable industry needs you to contact your local state representative or senator.  They need to hear from all of our growers and industry suppliers as to how devastating these cuts would be to our industry, our communities and our citizens. Click here for a number of talking points that you can use to discuss this situation with your representatives.  
 
The representatives on the Appropriations Committees have to approve the Regents budget, and all of our representatives have to VOTE on the budget.  In case you do not know who your representative is here is a link to the House and the Senate members http://www.legis.state.ga.us/.
 

 If you depend on:
….. your local county extension service personnel,
….. our UGA researchers for the latest in crop production information,
….. the Georgia 4-H program to work with our youth,
….. or other resource information from the college
. . . . .help us STOP the cuts.  The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences will do their share in budget cuts but they should not have to bear the burden for other colleges at UGA.     

PLEASE HELP!!
DO NOT SIT BACK AND ASSUME SOMEONE ELSE WILL MAKE THE CALLS -
 
PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY!!!
 

For more information or questions please call the GFVGA office at 1-877-99GFVGA.

March 1, 2010

Background – the university system has been ordered to find $300M in additional cuts beyond those already enacted.  The UGA portion of this is $60M. UGA Administration had less than 48 hrs to develop this plan. This is NOT a budget plan but rather a reaction to the request by the legislature.

Below are some talking point to use in talking with legislators concerning the cuts to the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) budget.    

Guidelines:

1.     Begin with how you use the College of Agriculture and the Cooperative Extension Service.  Include examples such as:

- CAES supports the largest industry in GA – agriculture.

- Agriculture is decentralized and we are the research (Experiment Station) and training (Cooperative   Extension) arms of the industry.   

- GA agriculture is predicted to continue to grow, but only if we remain competitive by being on the cutting edge of technology and implementation.

- Our programs bring measurable added value to Georgia’s economy and quality of life, providing a stronger, more competitive agricultural industry, needed education for families and proven youth development programs that help Georgia’s young people succeed in life.

 2.   Indicate that the College of Agriculture has been cutting budgets for the past two years. The current round of reductions are beyond the pale of anything ever seen to date, or anywhere else in the U.S. For example, Cooperative Extension will have been reduced by more than 51% if the current recommendations are implemented.

  3.   Over the past two years CAES administrators have streamlined the organization as tightly as they can without losing people and increasing the impact of unemployment on the state and total loss of services to citizens. Further cuts will have to mean people and loss of service including the ability to meet student needs, produce research results in a timely fashion and deliver service to local communities who are depending on the CAES now more than ever.

 4.   These are permanent losses. Agricultural research can’t be stopped and started. Cutting these programs will mean permanent loss of the benefits those projects would produce.

 5.   These are vital programs that Georgians depend on. These are programs that affect the livelihoods of one in every six Georgians. They are also programs that affect the quality of life for millions more. These cuts will be felt in local communities and Georgia’s agricultural industry. They will have long-term impact on our ability to sustain a profitable, viable, competitive agricultural industry. They will hamper CAES’s ability to prepare and train the largest segment of Georgia’s workforce. They will limit the support the College can give to emerging sectors like biofuel development, water protection, sustainable crops and food, and further development of environmental stewardship practices.

 6.   Further cuts of this magnitude will mean CAES will have to eliminate crucial services, stop important research programs and jeopardize jobs. All of these essential elements are needed to meet the growing demand for increased food, fiber and fuel production.  These are permanent losses that cannot be restored when the economic outlook improves. 

 7.   The return on the investment made in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences by other agencies, commodity commissions, corporations and agribusinesses is extremely high. Every dollar invested in CAES saves taxpayers dollars in the long run. CAES returns $3 for every $1 invested in Georgia counties.  For every $1 of state funds in the Research budget, CAES generates an additional $.83 from contracts and grants, federal and other funds. For every $1 invested in Cooperative Extension, CAES generates $1.40 in county, federal and other funds.

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Rule Places Heavy Burden on Georgia Growers

The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association is opposed to the US Department of Labor’s recent revisions to the H2A program which could drastically reduce Georgia’s production of fruits and vegetables.  The new regulations will significantly increase Georgia’s fruit and vegetable producer’s labor costs by more than 25%.  This includes at least a $1.86/hour wage rate increase, decreased flexibility in managing or assigning workers’ duties, creating additional burdensome paperwork and will add substantially to users’ risk of fines, enforcement actions and litigation. 

Although the Department states the new changes are necessary to protect workers, the revisions to the H-2A program will likely force many Georgia farmers out of the H-2A program altogether, resulting in fewer workers protected under the H-2A program.  This program was authorized by Congress to assure that a reliable and sufficient labor supply will be available to U.S. agriculture at the time of need.  The new rule will make an already cumbersome and costly process even more difficult for growers to access, afford and manage, forcing Georgia growers to look for other labor sources to plant and harvest their crops. 

The new H-2A regulation replaces 2008 reforms that were a step forward in balancing the needs of growers with the responsibility of protecting workers. This is the third effort by the Department of Labor in less than fourteen months to change the 2008 rules.   

Specific areas of concern for the new H2A revisions include the following:

• Retains and increases penalties while taking away operational, paperwork and cost advantages offered under the 2008 Rule. 

Examples include:

1.    To solve the problem of delays in getting workers to the farm to begin work on the day  the contract begins, the 2008 Rule allowed growers to attest to their compliance with housing standards until the state could schedule inspections.  The REVISED rule reinstates the requirement that housing MUST be inspected before USDOL will approve the application.

 2.   The 2008 Rule also allowed a significantly abbreviated application process in which growers could attest to compliance with program requirements but in return, for the attestation the guidelines stepped up subsequent monitoring, auditing and enforcement.  The REVISED rule returns to the tedious application process AND retains the increased audit, monitoring and enforcement activities.

• Tremendously increases employer liability with a return to the 50% rule, despite a study conducted by the Department in 2008 recommending the elimination of the 50% rule.  The 50% rule requires employers to hire all US workers who apply for an H2A job until half of the season is complete. This often adds the cost of additional training and unneeded workers to the payroll if H-2A workers are already in place.

• Expands upon already-onerous, expensive, and unproductive advertising and recruitment requirements, despite the Department’s own admission that some of the advertising is inefficient and outdated.

• Replaces a streamlined application process with an elongated, paperwork-intensive process that not only could result in long delays in worker arrivals but strains state agencies’ already limited budget resources as they struggle to meet deadlines.

• Reinstates a flawed, non-market-based Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) which makes the program unaffordable for many farm jobs. No other industry is forced into an artificial wage rate model which has little or no relationship to prevailing wages for the work done.  This ‘guaranteed’ wage rate (AEWR) averages about $2 more an hour than the Federal minimum wage in most states.  In addition this ‘guaranteed’ AEWR averages a 4% increase each year – which is significantly more than cost of living increases in the private and government sectors or more than most pension plans, including Social Security.

• Up-front costs to growers for each H-2A worker will increase significantly due to the mandated addition of border crossing, visa fees, recruitment fees and reimbursements of travel expenses during the first week of employment rather than at the 50% point. Some of these costs will be unpredictable and therefore unanticipated budget items, such as the requirement that the worker’s travel must be paid to and from the point of recruitment (usually his home) rather than to and from the point at which he accepted employment (usually a US consulate).

Charles Hall, Executive Director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association noted the new regulations could harm the agricultural worker that the new regulations were designed to help by decreasing the number of agricultural jobs available to them.  He said, “The new regulations will cripple, even could destroy, the only legal program available to growers who want to employ workers who want to work in agriculture and are legally authorized to do so. And with the loss of agricultural jobs, we could see a real decrease in fruit and vegetable production in the southeast when increased offshore production becomes more cost-effective to growers and consumers alike.”

According to Bill Brim, co-owner of Lewis Taylor Farms in Tifton, GA and a H-2A employer since 1998, many government officials and DOL staffers feel growers are displacing U.S. citizens that want to work when guest workers are employed.  Brim said, “These officials don’t realize that most US workers want jobs that are not as physically demanding as field production.  If high wages were what attracted US workers, we would have plenty working on our farm right now.  Here in GA, we were offering more than $8.50/hour when everybody else was paying less than $7 per hour, before minimum wages went to $7.25/hour.  In addition we offered free housing and we didn’t have many takers.  So, without a guest worker program that I can afford and use, there’s no way to get my produce in or out of the ground.”

With the increased difficulty in job advertising, record-keeping requirements, potential for litigation, and costs of the program there is real concern many growers may be driven away from the program altogether.  H-2A employer Bo Herndon, President of L.G. Herndon, Jr. Farms in Lyons, GA said, “I would love to employ US workers instead of using the H-2A program but that is not reality.  Now with these new changes in the regulations it will be tough for many of us to stay in the program. I think there will be a lot of growers getting out of the H-2A program.”

According to Dan Bremer, President of AgWorks, Inc, a labor consulting firm that helps ag employers meet the legal requirements of the H-2A program, the new regulations would not create jobs for local communities.  Bremer said, “Fruit and vegetable growers in Georgia create a lot of jobs in the communities supporting the growers up and down the distribution channel including production, packing, shipping and retail marketing.  These H-2A farmers go the extra mile to provide a legal workforce, safe transportation, decent housing and fair pay systems that is also open to local and domestic workers that want to apply.  Now to add almost $2.00 per hour to their wage rate and other onerous record-keeping to their burden is not sustainable and patently unfair.”

Bremer also said there is overall concern that the Department of Labor and State agencies will not have the staff resources to support the certification and regulatory processes in time to meet growers needs.  The regulations go into effect on March 15, 2010 and growers are preparing work orders for the summer and fall.

For more information contact Charles Hall, Executive Director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, 706-845-8200, chall@asginfo.net.   

Contributors to this article included: Dan Bremer, AgWorks; Bill Brim, Lewis Taylor Farms; Frank Gasperini, National Council of Agricultural Employers; Charles Hall, Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association; L.G. Herndon, Jr.(Bo), L.G. Herndon Farms; Bob Redding, The Redding Firm; Sherry Sparks, AEGIS Consulting. For more information contact GFVGA at 706-845-8200.

Country of Origin Labeling is a labeling law that requires retailers, such as full-line grocery stores, supermarkets, and club warehouse stores, notify their customers with information regarding the source of certain foods. Food products, (covered commodities) contained in the law include muscle cut and ground meats: beef, veal, pork, lamb, goat, and chicken; wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish; fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables; peanuts, pecans, and macadamia nuts; and ginseng. Regulations for fish and shellfish covered commodities (7 CFR Part 60) became effective in 2005. The final rule for all covered commodities (7 CFR Part 60 and Part 65) went into effect on March 16, 2009. AMS is responsible for administration and enforcement of COOL.