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Annual farm bill clears NC Senate

By Travis Fain, WRAL statehouse reporter

6/17/19

A wide-ranging bill to regulate North Carolina's growing hemp industry, which also allows more shooting ranges on farms and has hog farm language that environmentalists don't trust, cleared the state Senate Monday night.

Senate Bill 315 survived several attempts by Democrats to water it down, and one Democrat's attempt to add a ban to the bill on building new poultry farms in flood-prone areas. The Republican majority set each of those changes aside, including an attempt from state Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, to split the 30-plus-page bill into four parts so legislators could take what they like and leave what they don't.

"Sometimes you have to have something good along with something that some folks don't think is so good," state Sen. Brent Jackson, the bill's primary sponsor, said as he asked senators to oppose the split. "I think that everything in this bill is good policy."

The vote was 31-14, a bipartisan decision to move the full bill over to the House, where it will go through more committees and is likely to change some more. Jackson, R-Sampson, said he expects one section dealing with odors from hog farms to morph substantially or be removed in the House, but negotiations weren't quite far along enough to handle that in the Senate.

Among other things the bill includes:

- A laundry list of regulations for the hemp industry, including a ban on smokable hemp that would be delayed until December 2020. This is to give law enforcement, which is worried that the largely THC-free hemp is visually indistinguishable from marijuana, time to talk with growers about a solution that allows sales of the hemp flower, which contain a medicinal oil, without de-facto legalizing marijuana.

- Several sections affecting the hog industry, including one the North Carolina Pork Council says will help farmers cover hog waste lagoons to collect biogas that can be burned for energy. Environmentalists worry the language is an end-around on the state's ban on expanding the lagoon system.

- Language that exempts soil and water records from the state's public records act. Jackson said the measure simply lines up with federal disclosure rules, but attorneys in the environmental sector say this change protects documents that could expose environmental problems on farms.

- A change in the state's definition of agritourism that would allow farmers to add rifle ranges, skeet shooting and other shooting sports on their property without being blocked by county zoning laws.

- Plans to trademark and advertise the North Carolina sweet potato

Source: https://www.wral.com/annual-farm-bill-clears-nc-senate/18457864/