Issue Position: Agribusiness

Issue Position

Agriculture is the lifeblood of our state, and is central to our identity as Kansans. The Kelly Administration will focus intently on ensuring that the state's immediate and long-term agricultural needs are addressed:

Water. The 2015 Long Term Vision for the Future of the Water Supply in Kansas laid out a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to managing our state's most precious and vital natural resource. Unfortunately, most of the Vision's recommendations have not been implemented. The Kelly Administration will develop a plan to prioritize funding for key elements of the Vision in partnership with local and regional partners. This will include not only a focus on water quantity, but also on ensuring that emerging issues of water quality are being addressed.

Corporate Farming. Kansas needlessly got a black eye from the Brownback-Colyer fiasco in Tonganoxie, where a lack of transparency and preparation left residents angry, Tyson angry, and our state losing a massive investment. We can do better, by acknowledging that corporate farming is an important part of our agricultural sector and that our state needs reasonable regulations to balance the interests of communities and corporate farms. Corporate interests and local communities need predictability and clarity around whether residents will support both corporate farms and stand-alone processing operations, and whether these communities have the infrastructure and growers required to support these operations. The Kelly Administration will direct state agencies to be meaningful partners in working with local communities seeking corporate farming and/or processing operations to evaluate their readiness--water and wastewater infrastructure, housing, schools--so that communities are prepared to compete successfully for corporate farms, and so corporate interests have predictability and know what they're getting when they select a community.

Supporting Local Producers. Farmers growing produce for sale to their communities should have easy access to local markets, as well support in expanding the size and scale of their operations to meet the needs of larger-scale buyers. The Kelly Administration will work to eliminate red tape keeping local producers from selling at farmers' markets, as well as eliminating barriers to selling to local school districts, nursing homes and supermarkets.

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