The Ohio Farmers Union meets in Columbus today for its 83rd annual convention. The list of top issues includes high real estate property taxes, increased fertilizer runoff that cause algae blooms and the future of the Affordable Care Act.
WOSU's Debbie Holmes talked to Ohio Farmers Union president Joe Logan about what's up for discussion.
The below is an automated transcript. Please excuse minor typos and errors.
Debbie Holmes: So let's discuss, what are the main issues then that farmers want to talk about this year?
Joe Logan: Well as you alluded to, Debbie, CAUV, which is Ohio's formula for calculating farmland property taxes, is a primary issue for Ohio farmers and that is the result of the enormous explosion in agricultural property rates over the last several years. Many farmers have experienced from a 300 to sometimes 800-900 percent increase in their property tax valuations and property tax bills over the last several years. And it's really becoming an existential threat to some farms as commodity values have collapsed in the same time frame.
So dramatically higher property taxes, at the same time, the revenues from commodities are decreasing rapidly. So we have a lot on our plate there. We are working together with other organizations, including the school groups, school interest groups, as well as other farm organizations and the Ohio legislature, to come up with some fixes to this CAUV formula in order to make farmers be able to stay on the land.
Debbie Holmes: And I guess for some, those farmers who were ready to get out, that was the perfect time.
Joe Logan: Well, there's nothing good about being forced out by exorbitant property taxes. But, in some cases, yes, some farmers were ready to give up the ghost and this is, I guess, an opportunity.
Debbie Holmes: There's also a lot of concern about fertilizer runoff from farms, leading to thick algae blooms in Ohio waterways, particularly in Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys in northwest Ohio. Tell me what farmers are thinking can happen, then, to stem this problem.
Joe Logan: We have been very engaged in that process for many, many years. In fact, I've been a member of the Ohio phosphorus task force and worked with both regulators and scientists all across the state to try to address this problem and come up with a prescription for solving it. As you know, Ohio's governor, along with the governors of Michigan, Indiana and Ontario, have committed to reduce phosphorus imputs in the western base of Lake Erie by some 40 percent. So we are trying to find formulas to do that.
And we know that it's a combination of conservation practices that will be employed by farmers and also some different policy issues that need to be ramped up. We believe that the Ohio Department of Agriculture needs to find a better formula for managing the concentrated livestock feeding operations, and we will be working to craft some and to introduce some new ideas for approaching that problem and helping farmers to solve this in a way that is short of the stern regulatory approach that has been used in the Chesapeake water system.
Debbie Holmes: I also understand that the Affordable Care Act is of great concern to the union as well.
Joe Logan: Well it is indeed. Obviously farmers are self-employed people. We've been responsible for procuring our own health care insurance for decades now, and in most cases it hasn't been deductible allowance for farmers. That's something we continue to be concerned about.
We have been advocates of the Affordable Care Act because it has given a lot of our members subsidies, according to which they could procure the health care that they may not have been able to afford by other means. So we're a little bit nervous about the situation, but we're willing to work with the administration and the new Congress to try to come up with a suitable substitute if they see fit to repeal it.
