Brown Collar Jobs
The Daniels Administration hopes reducing regulatory red tape — in terms of instituting quicker turn_around times for confined feeding permit applications, for instance — will drive expansion in the livestock sector, which will in turn lead to a cash infusion in rural areas as people come to work and do business with the new entities.The quality of the jobs created in the green sector in terms of wages and skill level is up for debate in that there will be some low_paying jobs, but agriculture is becoming an increasingly sophisticated science — especially if farm boys begin learning how to operate systems like methane digesters. The general premise behind the effort to diversify the employment base is to avoid leaving the state’s workers and income too beholden to any one sector.
We saw a part of this effort locally when Andy Miller, the Director of the newly created Department of Agriculture appeared at the Wayne County Board of Zoning Appeals meeting as it was considering Wayne County’s first proposed CAFO. Link
The Department has launched a 20 year plan: Possibilites Unbound: The Plan for 2025 in which it sets forth it vision (like to double Indiana’s pork production), its means and methods (like creating an Industry CAFO/CFO team consisting of key livestock organizations, IDEM, and EPA, charged with reviewing all of Indiana’s CAFO/CFO rules and processes and offer a holistic new approach by August 2005) and key roadblocks to be defeated along the way:
Indiana has significant weaknesses which must be addressed:
- A serious decline in food processing;
- A negative image in the industry of Indiana’s environmental regulatory agencies which dissuades investment in the State;
- A lack of coordination between multiple state agencies involved with agricultural economic development;
- Land costs that are well above the national average and increasing each year;
- Emerging local land use regulations that are affecting producers’ right to farm; and
- Reliance on Federal farm subsidies by a large number of the State’s producers.
