‘We’re stewards of the land.’ PA Farm Bill helps Happy Valley 7-generation farm plan for its future
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding visited a State College farm Thursday to celebrate the Pennsylvania Farm Bill, which has invested nearly $76 million in hundreds of programs and farmers across the state since it began.
The Hess Farm has been a family farm since the 1840s. Owners Jeff and Cindy Harding have five children, who are part of the seventh generation to be on the farm.
“We really believe as farmers that we’re stewards of the land, we don’t own the land. We just work it, we take care of it,” Jeff Harding said.
The Hardings took advantage of the succession planning grant, part of the PA Farm Bill that makes it easier for farmers to transfer land to their beginner farmers, to help Jeff and Cindy transfer the process to their children. They’re hopeful their kids, and grandkids, will return to the farm in the future.
Wolf talked about the importance of succession planning and why that was part of the PA Farm Bill.
“We wanted to support the future success of farmers. We wanted to remove barriers to entry for new farmers to make that succession process easier. Basically wanted to increase food security for everybody. And I’m proud to say that we’ve made progress on each of these fronts,” he said.
Richard Roush, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, said a great feature of agriculture in Pennsylvania is the system it has for preserving agricultural farm land. But more farmers are needed.
“It doesn’t do any good if we’re good at preserving farmland if we don’t have enough farmers to populate it,” he said. The Farm Bill is a great, innovative start, he said, but “our work is not done. We got to populate it with young farmers.”
The PA Farm Bill, the first state-based farm bill in the United States, was signed by Wolf in 2019 to support Pennsylvania agriculture long term. Since then, it’s helped hundreds of programs and farmers, he said, by ensuring generations-old farms have a blueprint for transition, allowed infrastructure to grow, and improved the health and sustainability of farms.
“I think one of the things that we’re so proud of in agriculture is, the world has to eat. And truly, if there’s anything that’s really above politics in today’s world, it’s food production. We all need to eat, the world needs to eat, and we’re so proud that we can help with that locally on a local basis as we do our part in helping to feed the world,” Jeff Harding said.
House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, said the PA Farm Bill had a lot of bipartisan support and is reflected in this year’s state budget including environmental initiatives that impact the agriculture community. Last session another bill was passed that relates to the PA Farm Bill that focuses on farm liability and protections.
Jessica Herr represented Pennsylvania as its national FFA officer candidate and is a fifth generation farmer living off of a dairy, poultry and crop farm in Lancaster County. She called the Farm Bill a “win” for agriculture.
“We celebrate Pennsylvania agriculture and celebrate the heritage and the legacy of generational farmers like myself, or the Hardings that we’re visiting here today, and how the Farm Bill creates opportunities like farm vitality grants to keep that generation and that heritage alive,” she said. “But the Pennsylvania Farm Bill has also created opportunities for youth just like myself and our 4-H state officers here today to be the next generation and be the future of the agricultural industry, to continue to build that community that we all get to call home.”
Redding talked about other long-term impacts of the PA Farm Bill. He spoke of a school district in Erie that started a garden and now integrated it into the school’s curriculum through the Farm Bill. The diversity of the impacts is what he’s proud of, he said.
“What I’m particularly proud of is, it’s the first generation and 10th generation. It’s the Amish and the English. It’s the forest and the livestock, and the plants. It is Black and it’s white and it’s Asian. It is so many things that give us … a reason to celebrate agriculture, we see the diversity,” he said.
