NC COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE
NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot.
Reason for my Endorsement: Incumbent Troxler is extremely popular, but after reading extensively about both Troxler and Taber, I’m persuaded it’s time for a change in the state’s Agricultural practices and promises.
Sean Haugh (Libertarian)
Haugh is fa Libertarian from Durham. He says he’s recently retired from seven years as a professional pizza delivery man, which he also says gave him a useful window into how regular pizza-eating citizens live their lives.
Haugh’s sometimes provides off-beat whimsicality to the various races he’s run for under the banner of the Libertarian Party. He ran twice for U.S. Senate, twice for an NC House seat, and now he’s on the ballot for Secretary of Agriculture. In other words, he’s a perennial candidate who likes to inject a little welcome humor into hopeless quests.
He tried to school the MAGA hoard in how to play politics:
“Being equally cynical about Ds & Rs makes me a neutral observer, I imagine. It’s hilarious to watch the Rs totally faceplant in their reactions to Tim Walz. There’s a reason why his criticism of Rs as ‘weird’ sticks, guys. Please stop being weird. 1) If you can’t spell his name correctly, then it’s safe to say you were completely ignorant about him until today so your opinion means nothing. 2) He is vulnerable on policy, but only for what he did as a Governor. Attacking him on anything before he was Gov is just stupid …. You’re gonna lose if you make it personal. The only way you can beat him is with superior policy arguments.”
Speaking of superior policy arguments, Haugh’s lists his priorities as greater educational opportunities, stronger economic potential, reducing taxes and regulatory burdens, and better healthcare options.
I’m not sure how those priorities can be addressed as Commissioner of Agriculture, but maybe we can chat that up sometime over a beer and pizza.
Sarah Taber (Democrat)
https://www.facebook.com/sarahtabernc
Taber is from Harlan County, Kentucky. She operated her family’s small holdings and took on field, garment shop, and factory jobs to pay for school. Taber’s personal background sounds raw enough to trust and real as dirt: “I grew up working on farms. I got good at chores, sure — but I also got good at the livelihood part of agriculture.”
Taber built a business being expert in aquaculture and aquaponics and greenhouses. She started her consultancy in 2006 to help farms and farmers transition away from traditional crops like tobacco and toward non-traditional but highly lucrative forms of agriculture — growing food under glass or in water.
Alongside her work with family farms, Later Taber helped launch a series of vegetable greenhouses and indoor farms that are now worth over $4 billion. She points out that in spite of the fact that failure is common in the greenhouse sector, all of her farm clients are still in operation, including those who began with little or no experience in agriculture.
Taber is currently raising her family in Fayetteville where her husband teaches at Fayetteville State.
Taber published an amazing little essay in The Nation in January of this year and did some woman ‘splaining to the men about the importance of her gender on farms: “We’re the ones who balance the family books, take outside jobs, handle invoicing, and turn raw crops and livestock into goods ready for people to buy. We are the business backbone that makes farm country work.”
“Rural poverty causes radicalization. So does pollution from farms. Farm radicalization isn’t just a local problem. Farm outfits that hire undocumented workers put serious money behind hard-right legislators and sheriffs who pledge to collaborate with ICE. That means local country politics can get ugly. And those ugly politics don’t stay local. They can undermine democracy for the whole state.”
Taber holds a doctorate in plant medicine from the University of Florida. In her case, education has sparked an imagination for big agricultural projects that could actually save the planet, like the idea of turning abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico into seaweed-growing operations that could cleanse Gulf waters of their pollution.
Taber’s professional consultancy site, where Taber identified as a crop scientist and writer, has disappeared from the Web in favor of taberforNC.com. Regrettably (for me at least), she decided to highlight in her campaign her academic credentials a little more than I think can help her with a population used to good ole boys who are careful not to act too smart. When is the flashing of higher education ever not off-putting as a social class marker?
Steve Troxler (Republican)
https://www.facebook.com/SteveTroxlerNC/
Troxler is a native of Guilford County and is the founder, owner and operator of Troxler Farms. He is a 1974 graduate of N.C. State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in conservation and a concentration in environmental studies.
Since taking office in 2005, Troxler has focused on developing new markets for N.C. farm products, preserving working farms and protecting the state’s food supply. He’s a past president of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and a former chairman of NASDA’s Food Regulation and Nutrition Committee, and received a 2015 NASDA award for his commitment to food safety.
Troxler also serves on many other boards including the N.C. Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation, the Rural Economic Development Center and the N.C. Biotechnology Center.
Troxler has come away over the years with numerous awards: a Distinguished Alumni Award, both from the N.C. State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a 2015 Friend of the River Award from the Land of Sky Regional Council. Other honors include the 2013 Forest Conservationist of the Year Award from the N.C. Wildlife Federation and the Grosvenor Food Safety Award from the Association of Food and Drug Officials, and a leadership award from the Western North Carolina Livestock Center and WNC Communities.
Nonetheless there are troubling some signs about Troxler’s record as Agricultural Commissioner:
— Troxler has been accused of coddling big business and failing to enforce regulations he doesn’t like. Late in 2011, according to reports on WTVD and WRAL, Hoke County sheriff’s deputies raided a Butterball turkey farm after they were provided under-cover video of animal abuse. Butterball officials were tipped off about the investigation by a Troxler deputy six days before the raid.
— In 2019, another audit showed Troxler and his top aide imporperly spent over $22,000 of taxpayer dollars on unauthorized travel costs during annual state fairs.
Troxler’s Democratic opponent, Sarah Taber, is going squarely at Troxler as corrupt, the single biggest factor — if it’s true — known by political science to motivate significant shifts in the vote. Taber herself summed up the Troxler era in her piece for “The Nation”, “Why I’m Running for Commissioner of Agriculture”:
“We’ve had the same commissioner of agriculture for 20 years, despite a series of fumbles and corruption scandals on his watch. He presided over the largest crop insurance fraud ring in US history. His department tipped off meat plants suspected of animal abuse before a “surprise” inspection. His greatest success was encouraging China to buy North Carolina-grown tobacco—only for Trump, for whom the incumbent helped raise funds and votes, to destroy that market with a trade war.”
Meanwhile, Taber claims, Troxler and his aides “misspent taxpayer dollars on high-end lodgings and dining.”
So why is tobacco-farmer Troxler so popular? Taber says he’s actually quite unpopular with an increasing number of farmers. Her evidence is partly anecdotal:
“I’m struck by how eager North Carolina’s farmers are for change. It’s not hard to see why. After you account for inflation and population growth, North Carolina’s farm economy has shrunk by 19 percent in the last 20 years. Our farmers and ranchers feel it. And they know what the problem is: corrupt leadership. One hog farmer put it to me this way: “Politicians are a bit like piggies. They’re frisky when they’re little. But then they discover corn and become hogs.” He paused and went on. “Maybe it’s time to put this one in the smokehouse.”
But her best evidence that Troxler’s popularity may be illusory is numbers. In 2020 ,several North Carolina farm counties voted for the Democratic candidate for commissioner of agriculture, and not by a little: Anson. Bertie. Northampton. Hertford. Vance. Hoke. Chatham. Watauga. Halifax. Warren. Edgecombe.
“Troxler doesn’t win because of the farmer vote. After all, farmers are less than 1 percent of North Carolina’s population. Why does he keep winning, then? Suburbs.” In 2020, hundreds of thousands of suburban North Carolinians voted for both Joe Biden and a Republican commissioner of agriculture who Taber claims is wildly unpopular in much of the state’s rural farm country. Why? Says Taber, “Because he looks and sounds like what suburbanites think a farmer should look like.”