The 2024 Pennsylvania Farm Show is in full swing this week.

The Farm Show is the world’s largest indoor agricultural exhibition. It showcases the people, products, animals and crops that go into the state’s largest industry.

Today’s agriculture is much different than in the past. Even the family farm uses technology and science. What hasn’t changed is farmers face many challenges from weather and climate change to waiting on the federal government to enact a farm bill.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding spoke to The Spark's Scott LaMar at the Farm Show to discuss the state of agriculture in Pennsylvania, starting with the good news in agriculture,"We're only state in the nation with a its own state level farm bill. I think it puts us in a really important space, too. We have 44 inches of natural rain, right? Put that on the asset list. I think we've got the ports that are now open to Pennsylvania. Only state with three ports Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Erie links us to the 95% of the available stomachs that are in the United States of America. Uh, and we have more young farmers under the age of 35 than any other state nation."

What's the bad news or challenges farmers are facing? "We've just experienced avian influenza. That's a threat that remains a threat. Everybody's complaining about it was a warm December. Well, the birds are just as confused as we are, right? They're not migrating. They're slower about it. That's how we got the last infection here right before Christmas. Uh, that's a challenge for us. It's still as strong as it was a year and a half ago. So that's a problem. We've got a $7 billion poultry industry in the state. So that's a concern. I think the climate to me is a threat in that we are conditioned to grow certain crops certain way, certain times, certain seasons, all of that. And then all of a sudden you find yourself with these climate extremes that make it really difficult for our producers. It's both a threat and an opportunity, because I often believe that the only way you're going to solve the climate issue is to do the good things and the good practices you've been doing."

Secretary Redding also mentioned that Pennsylvania farmers need Congress to pass a long-term Farm Bill so they can have more certainty. The Farm Bill was scheduled to be renewed last year but Congress passed only a one-year bill. On the federal level, Redding said farmers that count on immigrants on a seasonal basis want immigration reform.

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