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Candidates for Lieutenant Governor will square off in a debate revolving around agriculture and rural issues at the Indiana State Fair Tuesday at 3pm in the Purdue Extension Building. The debate is hosted by AgrIInstitute.
“The Lieutenant Governor is the highest elected agricultural official in the state of Indiana,” says AgrIInstitute Executive Director Beth Archer. “And that’s critically important to the future of our industry on so many fronts including trade development, including any kind of influence that we have on regulatory policies, or any of those sorts of things that impact the agricultural industry.”
Archer encourages folks to join in person at the fairgrounds or tune in to the livestream at hoosieragtoday.com, on our YouTube channel, or on our Facebook page to catch the debate at 3pm.
This is the sixth Lieutenant Governor debate that AgrIInstitute has hosted.
“We do not get engaged in any kind of political activism or get involved in any kind of policy advocacy,” Archer explains. “Our role, really, is to provide a platform for people to become better informed decision makers, and we can serve the entire industry by being that neutral space for these kinds of discussions and this kind of information to be shared.”
Republican Micah Beckwith, Democrat Terry Goodin, and Libertarian Tonya Hudson will take questions from panelists that will focus on agriculture and rural issues. The candidates don’t know what those questions will be, just the topics.
Archer says the topics will include “environmental concerns, market development, concerns related to energy as that impacts the agricultural land. I anticipate that we will hear lots of topics that impact the various aspects from the agronomic side to the animal side of agriculture.”
The panel asking questions represents farmers, farm organizations, and the farm media. That panel includes Eric Pfeiffer, Vice President of Hoosier Ag Today; David Hardin, Hardin Farms; Allison Lund, Editor at Indiana Prairie Farmer; and John Ketzenberger, Director Government Relations for The Nature Conservancy.