TheFirstFurrow

The North Carolina General Assembly opens its 2016 “short” session in five days. We’re going to look ahead to the session in a moment, but first it’s important to establish some background by reviewing some of the legislature’s recent work to benefit North Carolina farmers.

Unlike the NCAA basketball tournament, the first round of North Carolina elections—last week’s primary—didn’t result in big upsets or surprises. The council of state races held as projected and, for the most part, incumbents in the state house and senate will be moving on to their general elections or returning to Raleigh for the 2017 long session.

Today, instead of analyzing individual races across the state, we will focus on the Farm Bureau-supported Connect NC Bond results and discuss a few voting trends that continue to emerge in urban and rural areas. (If you’re interested in learning about those other races, we highly recommended you read the NC Free Enterprise Foundation’s post-primary briefing.)

North Carolina voters last night passed the $2 billion Connect NC Bond that will strengthen food security and national security by making two investments in the future of North Carolina agriculture. NC Farm Bureau strongly supported the Connect NC Bond that provides $85 million for the Plant Sciences Initiative at NC State and $94 million for updating NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) laboratories.

Last week, we explained why the timing is right for the Connect NC bond. This week we want to talk about a couple of the projects included in the bond that are important for North Carolina agriculture.

Those projects are the Plant Science Initiative at NC State University and a new, co-located laboratory facility for the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA).

But first let’s take a moment to consider why the General Assembly included these agriculture-based projects in the bond package. Agriculture is our state’s number one industry, generating about $78 billion a year. Nearly one out of every five jobs is related to agriculture. Our state leaders know that a thriving agriculture economy means a thriving North Carolina economy.

And so they included these two major agriculture investments in the Connect NC bond.