“It’s time to give agriculture a seat at the table again. I’m going to tell you this right now, if Terry Goodin gets elected as lieutenant governor, agriculture is going to get its voice back in Indiana.”
Terry Goodin shared that with us on the latest Indiana Ag Policy Podcast last week. Goodin is the Lieutenant Governor candidate on the Democrat ticket. You’ll find his name on the ballot with his running mate, Jennifer McCormick.
We discussed a number of ag related topics on the Indiana Ag Policy Podcast, available now wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Indiana Corn Growers Association and Indiana Soybean Alliance are supporting a bill this legislative session that would incentivize retailers to install infrastructure to sell higher blends of ethanol to consumers.
Goodin says, not only would he support the bill, “I’m going to see whatever you folks bring to the table, you say, ‘here’s what we would like to have’, and I’m going to double it. I’m going to say, okay, let’s look bigger than that. Let’s look at a bigger picture. And I think in Indiana, in the past, what the legislature has done is they’ve tried to do things on the cheap. Okay, you can’t do things on the cheap, because if you do it on the cheap, you always have to come back and redo it. Right? If agriculture does good in Indiana, that means our small communities do good. When our small communities do good in Indiana, that means our bigger communities do good, and that means the state of Indiana does good.”
Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron joined us on the podcast and asked Goodin about farmland property taxes. Here is part of his response.
“Here’s what I don’t understand. We will go out and recruit factories that will come in and pay people $12-$13 an hour and give them thousands and thousands of dollars of tax abatements. How come we’re not treating our farmers the same way? Because that field is a factory for that farmer, just like that building that’s sitting downtown employing so many folks or making the hubcaps, right? So, how come farmers aren’t treated equally when it comes to taxation as we move forward? So, that’s going to be a huge part of it. But let’s be clear here- our opponents are not serious about the property tax issue and the property tax crisis, because they created it.”
We are still working to align schedules with Goodin’s opponents on the Republican side to have them on the Indiana Ag Policy Podcast as well. You can hear the podcast in its entirety below. Election day is November 5- get out and vote.
