4/17/01

By CAROL KINSLEY

Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has nominated Michael T. Scuse of Smyrna, Del., to be the next state secretary of agriculture. She made the announcement April 7 at the annual Ag Industry Dinner. Scuse had agreed to conduct a benefit auction that evening so he was unable to attend. He didn’t know the nomination was official until his daughter, Holly, who is FFA president, came home full of excitement.
Scuse had met with the governor only one day before the dinner and accepted the position, pending confirmation by the state senate after its spring recess.
Jack Tarburton, who has headed the department of agriculture since former Gov. Tom Carper took office, will assume a newly created position in the Delaware Economic Development Office.
Agriculture is an incredibly important industry in Delaware,” said Minner, “and I am pleased to announce that I will have these two good men working to support our farms and farmers. Jack has done an outstanding job and he is the perfect person to take the next step in state government’s promotion of agriculture.
“This is something the agriculture community has said for years was needed, and I agree,” Minner said. “Farming is a major industry and we ought to support it the same way we do auto plants or pharmaceutical companies. I am so grateful to Jack for taking on this task.”
Tarburton will assume the new post the second week in May. His assignment, in “bumper sticker” form, he said, is to improve the value of Delaware agriculture. It extends beyond political boundaries, he said. He has been cooperating with Brad Powers of Maryland Department of Agriculture for the last year or so on matters affecting the whole Delmarva Peninsula.
In the short term, Tarburton continued, he hopes to recruit more vegetable production and value-added facilties, including processors of frozen and canned foods.
“Long term, Delaware has such a wonderful biotech institute, I’d like to be on the ground floor in helping translate that technology to Delaware farmers.”
Tarburton said he also has invited himself to meet with local focus groups downstate, to chat with farmers about what they’d like to see.
“There are opportunities with the major processors such as Perdue and Allen’s already,” he added. He wants to learn what they’d like to see located near them to reduce transportation costs.
Although it’s time for spring planting and Scuse, with his brother, Dale, farms 1,700 acres in Kent County, the nominee is wasting no time in preparing to take office “should I be confirmed,” he stipulated. He has met with the Delaware Nutrient Management Commission and some staff members at Delaware Department of Agriculture.
Scuse paused in the middle of rebuilding the fertilizer pump on a 7200 John Deere 12-row corn planter to talk about his new position.
“I’d like to work a lot more with farmers, as well as the rest of the members of the agricultural community. My focus will be to try to bring more agribusiness to the state and to ensure we don’t lose any more.”
He lamented the recent loss of another vegetable processor. “That’s a tragedy,” he said. “We need to try to prevent that type of thing from happening.
“If we work together with the state of Maryland, especially on the Eastern Shore, to promote and protect agribusiness, we can accomplish a lot more than as individual states.
“There’s a lot at stake here with agriculture because of the number of people employed and the amount of money that agriculture brings into the state. We need to work very hard to protect that.
“We’ve protected a lot of land, especially in Kent County. We need to continue that, and to ensure future markets for all this land we have in preservation.”
Scuse noted the need for some new type of funding mechanism for ag land preservation. “Without a budget surplus, it will be difficult to continue funding.”
Scuse hopes to continue farming, although on a much more limited basis. “I don’t want it to interfere with my duties as secretary, but I’ve been farming all my life. I don’t want to just give it up.
“Ours has always been a family farming operation,” he noted. His grandfather, Clarence Scuse, farmed the land originally.
His father, Clarence T. Scuse, retired two years ago. “It’s been just Dale and I, but Dad’s agreed to come out of retirement to help this spring,” Scuse said.
There are 750 acres of corn to plant “whenever it dries and warms up.” The corn acreage is being reduced about 10 percent this year because of the price of fertilizer. The family will plant about 250 acres of wheat, and the rest soybeans.
Scuse returned to farming after a year at Salem College in Salem, W. Va., where he studied, not agriculture but political science, he said with a laugh. He had graduated from Smyrna High School before there was an FFA program there, but he was in the 4-H program.
Scues was recorder of deeds for Kent County from 1986 to 1994. He’s been chairman of the Kent County Regional Planning Commission for more the last 4.5 years; state committee chairman of the Farm Service Agency (FSA) for four years; and a regional member of a leadership committee which advised former USDA chief Dan Glickman.
Meeting with farmers across the state in his FSA position, and listening to farmers across the national as they tried to come up with solutions for Secretary Glickman helped prepare him for this new job, Scuse said. Working on the planning commission made him very much aware of how much development is taking place within the state and how much agriculture needs protecting.
Scuse’s wife of 24 years, Patrice, is secretary of Smyrna School District. Their older daughter, Holly, is a sophmore at University of Delaware, studying ag education, and almost-15-year-old Ashley is a freshman at Smyrna High School.