Duvall shares optimism at NJFB annual convention

American Farm Bureau Foundation president Zippy Duvall, a third-generation Georgia farmer, delivered the banquet speech to a crowd of several hundred at New Jersey Farm Bureau’s annual convention on Nov. 14 at the Westin Hotel, Forrestal Village. (Photo by Richard Skelly)

WEST WINDSOR — American Farm Bureau Foundation president Zippy Duvall, a third-generation Georgia farmer, delivered the banquet speech to a crowd of several hundred at New Jersey Farm Bureau’s annual convention here Nov. 14 at the Westin Hotel, Forrestal Village.
Duvall, a gregarious man with a naturally friendly outlook, injected optimism into his remarks. For most Garden State farmers, it was a very tough year between weather conditions, price increases for fertilizer, diesel fuel and parts, and supply chain delays. Touching on outgoing New Jersey president Ryck Suydam’s chosen theme for this year’s gathering of agriculturalists, ‘Family, Farming, United,’ Duvall reminded the crowd they’re all one big family.
“It is a Farm Bureau family and no one knows that more than I do, because y’all were so wonderful to myself and my late wife and I consider all of you part of my family each and every day,” Duvall said at the outset. He cited Suydam for being a good friend and advisor, “and that’s why I have had him on my finance committee. I tell you, when Ryck speaks, people listen, y’all should be very proud of the service he has given to not just the state Farm Bureau but to agriculture across this country.” He also commended Farm Bureau executive director Peter Furey for his 40 years of service as of November.
“I love this time of year because I really get to talk about things that are really close to my heart,” he said, one of which is military service. He asked veterans in the room to stand and they were all given a rousing round of applause.
Duvall urged Farm Bureau delegates from almost all of New Jersey’s 21 counties to take some joy in going through sometimes minute changes to the policy book. “It’s not Zippy Duvall’s policies, it’s your policies,” he said.
“And when you invite a congressman or one of his staff to your farm, it is powerful stuff; when you tell them a story about your farm and how you struggle that’s powerful stuff; you need to tell your Congressmen and Senators this is how this legislation will affect me,” he urged, “and that is powerful stuff.”
“We need to make sure that less than 2 percent of this population in the U.S. has their voice heard, and that policy book is what we use to do that.”
He said AFBF had some tough calls to make during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, just as Garden State farmers had similarly tough decisions to make.
“We are in the people business. You come to Washington and normally you meet with someone. All of a sudden with COVID-19, nobody was in Washington. We realized we had to go back to our roots like our fathers and grandfathers did when you had to communicate one-on-one with people so we ended up doing it with Zoom. You might be looking at 20 people on the screen –but guess what– it made us better.”
Going forward as the country continues to emerge from new variants of COVID-19, “we’re going to continue to heighten the level of communication and do our best to make sure you know what’s going on, we’re going to make sure that we’re out there calling on you to get engaged so that we can generate the power that you all bring to this organization. We’re going to make sure that the heartbreaking stories from rural America get heard, as well as the success stories from rural America.”
He reminded the crowd the massive Farm Bill is coming up in 2023, and said this is one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress handles.
“The number one thing that I see everyday right now is inflation, the cost of inputs, the supply chain. That war in Ukraine has really changed the cost of production around the globe, not just here in this country. We were producing for just in time,” he said, “but now we’re producing for just in case.” He cautioned, it’s going to take a while for large government agencies to fix all these dysfunctional behaviors.
“Whether it’s creating new fertilizer plants in this country or fixing the depth of the Mississippi River, these things are going to take time so with our supply chain problems we have to figure out how to fix all this, just in case it happens again, because our farmers cannot afford to go through something like this ever again,” he noted and on top of all of this you have the sphere of global hunger.
“It’s not just the things I mentioned, it’s the policies and politics of other countries that’s pushing the farmers and ranchers away from the way we farm today and taking all the tools and technology away. If we don’t increase production in this world somebody’s going to be starving” he said.
“I don’t care if it’s in America or India or Africa, I don’t think with all the science-based technologies that we have that people ought to be starving in this world.”
Those involved in forming farm policy in Europe and our neighbors in Mexico are catching on, Duvall argued. Regarding Mexico, he said, “the big threat now is corn. They’re threatening to quit taking our white corn and yellow corn into Mexico,” he said, breaking with a trade agreement, “so I can tell you Farm Bureau will do whatever is necessary to ensure that agreement is enforced.”
Trade is one area where the current administration is too slow, he argued.
“This administration is not focusing on trade,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way to push them into making some decisions. We need to continue our trade with China – no we don’t trust them – but who are you going to trade with? We’ve got to make sure that we capitalize on the United Kingdom. I think there is opportunity there. And I think we have to get into trading with those people in the Pacific Rim, so we look forward to pushing forward on all of that.”
Duvall said the Farm Bill is increasingly important to farmers in the Northeast, because there are more specialty crops and ethnic crops grown in this part of the country, including many by smaller farms, “so we need to make sure that risk management tools are available to everybody.”
As far as conservation and being environmentally friendly goes, “we’ve been doing the right thing for decades with conservation,” he said. “I don’t care what the people say in this country. They think they’re going to teach us how to farm? We’ve been doing it right for decades.”
If the government creates voluntary, incentive-based market-based programs for climate or conservation, farmers will volunteer to do it, he argued.
“We’ve proven it. 140 million acres of farmland is in the conservation program, that’s more than the size of New York and California combined. We’ve proven we are doing it. If they need to spend R&D dollars, they need to put those programs out there and let us volunteer to do it and let them help us do it as we go along, we don’t mind, because we’ve been doing it for decades.”
He reminded the crowd that a big part of the Farm Bill is always nutrition. He urged the crowd to tell their legislators nutrition is a big part of farming.
“Nutrition is important to our country. None of us want to see the people who are less fortunate than we are, not being able to eat. Nutrition is important to our country because the people that deserve this need a hand up, not a handout, to get out of the situation they’re in,” he said.
In closing, he argued: “We may have your back each and every day, but we’ve also got to have you engaged. It is so so important. When the family is working together, it is strong.”