Larson
visits with ag group
10/29/02
By RICKY BOURGEOIS
Retired Adm. Charles Larson, Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, said his approach to taking on Maryland’s agricultural problems would include seeing farming as business, appointing a strong agriculture secretary, and careful budgeting.
Larson met last week with members of the Chesapeake Fields Institute (CFI) at the Kent County Extension offices in Chestertown. He listened as CFI Chairman John Hall outlined the institute’s research findings toward solving state agricultural problems. Larson said he sees a key role for the Department of Business and Economic Development in helping farmers. Currently, most economic assistance to Maryland farms is through the Maryland Department of Agriculture.
“I truly believe farmers and watermen are business people,” Larson said.
He also emphasized the importance of selecting an effective secretary for the Department of Agriculture. But funding, Larson said, is most important.
“The ultimate power is where the budget flows,” Larson said. He reiterated his concern that farmers be fairly represented in decisions affecting their enterprise, and his belief that he could improve that area of state government. “I’ve had a lot of management/organization experience,” Larson said.
Larson spoke of streamlining the gubernatorial cabinet, which now consists of 23 ex-officio members. He said he couldn’t imagine working effectively with a cabinet that large, that he is accustomed to working with advisory groups of 12 or 15 members.
Larson, a 1958 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, mentioned his extensive military experience among his qualifications for holding the office of lieutenant governor. In addition to flying attack aircraft, Larson served as commander of a nuclear submarine, and two terms as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. As Commander-in-Chief for the U.S. Pacific Command, he directed the largest unified Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force operation, covering 103 million square miles of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Larson said of his current candidacy: “It was just an opportunity to take one more tour of service and make something good happen.”
He said that while the position of lieutenant governor is usually seen as passive and without responsibility, he sees the position as a chance to be particularly effective. Larson said as lieutenant governor he would be able to focus his energies on three or four key issues with a kind of depth that is simply not possible for a governor, who is responsible for a much wider range of issues.
Larson said that while he didn’t expect to be officially designated as such, he would most likely be the “go-to guy” in the administration when it comes to agricultural matters.
“I definitely have the agricultural background. I grew up around farms and farming,” Larson said.
Larson said his sensitivity to agricultural issues developed as he grew up in Nebraska, spending summers at his family’s farms. His grandfather, a Danish immigrant, settled in South Dakota and set up 12 Midwest farm sites, 240 acres each. He said he still has relatives in Nebraska who own farmland there.
Larson acknowledged the common sentiment of Maryland farmers, that their concerns have been disregarded by the current administration in favor of environmentalist interests.
“I don’t want to backpedal on the environment,” Larson said but added that he would like to take a closer look at nutrient management policies, for example, “to look at how groups involved are represented in the decision-making process.”
He said he has met with Agriculture Secretary Hagner Mister to discuss that program’s deadlines and requirements. Larson said he didn’t envision any repeal and he couldn’t promise any changes, but that he understands farmers’ feelings of being ignored in the forming of such policies.
“They’ll get a place at the table,” Larson said of Maryland’s farmers. “I’m very interested in a very balanced approach. We’ll be working on this together.”
Mindful that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is lieutenant governor in the current administration, Larson accepted that it was their (his and Townsend’s) burden to prove that, if elected, they would make an honest effort to reach out to the farming community. He likened the situation to Joseph Heller’s WWII novel Catch-22, in which the air force will agree to relieve a pilot of duty on grounds of insanity, but holds that the very act of petitioning for relief of duty is proof that the petitioner is not insane.
“We want to represent all of Maryland,” Larson said. “We really can’t prove it totally until we’re elected.” After Hall’s presentation, Larson asked about farmers’ retirement plans, and whether current drought-relief measures are effective. Hall and other CFI board members responded that a retirement plan usually consists of a farmer selling his farm, most often to a land developer. Hall said drought relief comes in the form of low-interest loans, which are usually exhausted in preparations for the next growing season.
In his presentation, Hall showed the total net income of Maryland’s 12,400 farms to be just under $410 million, a net income average of about $33,000 per farm. Hall pointed out drastic drops in commodity prices, increased competition with overseas growers (namely in South America), a decrease in the number of farmers, and that producers get the smallest percentage of sales, with 10 times as much going to retail.
CFI stresses a return to regionally-based food systems, producing for a wider variety of food items, tailoring production to meet the needs of manufacturers and distributors, and exploring opportunities for export. CFI was incorporated in 2000. The institute works “to strengthen the profitability of traditional agricultural markets for family farmers, while conserving the region’s natural and cultural resources,” according to its mission statement.