12/1 By MARK POWELL

In an event-filled convention Nov. 13 and 14 in Cape May, New Jersey Farm Bureau delegates re-elected vegetable farmer John Rigolizzo Jr. as president and pushed through a number of major policy initiatives.
Rigolizzo, who was contested by first vice president Charles Kuperus, started a fourth 2-year term. Rigolizzo pledged to work diligently for the state’s farmers on a gamut of issues aimed at ensuring the viability of production agriculture in the Garden State.
In fact, farm viability was the topic of much of the resolutions session.
Everything from the quest for an ethanol plant in the state to the search for nutraceuticals to a discussion of the possibility of leasing parts of the Port of Salem for shipping produce and hay all revolved around increasing farm profits and making agriculture viable.
Farm Bureau Executive Director Peter Furey gave a brief presentation on the Salem County facility which offers a 19 foot deep channel connecting to the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Furey suggested to the Farm Bureau delegates that the port has the potential to open up new markets for ag products from the state.
“The Salem port is already used in shipping vegetables from the Philadelphia terminal market to Bermuda,” Furey said. “Some of those vegetables probably originate in South Jersey. “
He suggested that New Jersey vegetable producers could work together to increase their markets presence and ship container loads out of the Salem facility.
“We could even ship hay and fruit to South America,” Furey said.
He pointed out that the Jersey Fruit Cooperative is already trucking produce to Houston and from there to South America.
Using the Port of Salem for those purposes merits he looking into, he proposed.
Delegates to the convention passed an extensive list of resolutions. The first involved farm viability. In part, the resolution stated: “New Jersey Farm Bureau now intends to take a leadership role in stressing the importance of farm viability. Building on current and updated policies, NJFB will present trends in the industry through an Economic Indicators Conference to establish a baseline of economic information. This should be coupled with the expansion of plans for new farm business development plans like new use agriculture, biofuels and a farm product logistics center at the Port of Salem.”
Farm Bureau delegates also expressed a great deal of concern with the state’s water quality regulations. The new regulations use the state’s land use plan mapping to indicate where wastewater treatment expansions can occur.
Farm Bureau and the State Board of Agriculture have analyzed the regulations and have expressed concerns about the impact on the property rights of landowners.
In a resolution, the delegates voted to encourage farm community participation in the process in which local citizens will develop water quality proposals for their watersheds. On farmland assessment, the delegates considered, but defeated a resolution which would have created a separate category of land taxation for open space that is not actively farmed.
In resolutions concerning Cook College, the delegates saluted the current dean, Dr. Bruce Carlton, who retires next year.