Perdue offers support to ag leaders in N.M.
At Roundhouse, U.S. agriculture secretary addresses workforce, wilderness concerns
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told New Mexico agricultural leaders that his agency would seek to address industry workforce concerns that have been exacerbated by a federal immigration crackdown and deliver “more aggressive” support in their ongoing clashes with predators and wildlife protection efforts.
In a Monday roundtable at the Roundhouse, Perdue, a former two-term Republican governor of Georgia, told past and present leaders of some 20 ranching and farming associations that he was a “skeptic” of wilderness designations and expansions, which some industry representatives said had forced ranchers off protected land.
“Wilderness really keeps land away from the people, frankly,” Perdue said. “… It limits the availability of utilization of the land. We have to be very careful as we preserve.”
Ranchers and farmers expressed their concerns about wildlife and what they said was undue regulation from U.S. Forest Service and other wildlife officials.
Tom Sidwell, president of the New Mexico Cattlegrowers Association, said New Mexico ranchers had been victimized by the Endangered Species Act, which a number of attendees said had been used as a cudgel to close off certain areas and foreclose grazing and water usage. Perdue promised a more streamlined approach to ranchers’ concerns.
“We’ve been little scaredy-cats over litigation on some of these things,” Perdue said. “We’ve kind of rolled over. I don’t mind being sued. The government gets sued every day. Bring it on. We’re gonna do what we think is right.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not gonna try to do things environmentally sound and scientific,” he added.
Charlie DeGroot, president of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico, told Perdue that beefed-up immigration enforcement
efforts had made labor an issue in the state’s agriculture industry.
“Forty or 60 or 70 percent of our employees have to be replaced,” he said. “They’re not processing those folks; they’re not deporting them. Those people go down the road to present those documents to another agricultural employer, who will then be in the same pickle. But the onus and the consequence falls on the operator. Cows have to be milked every darn day.”
Perdue said he would continue to implore the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to “leave our people alone.”
Perdue’s ongoing tour through several Western states took him through Albuquerque on Sunday where he met with U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-Hobbs, and college leaders of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute.
Perdue began Monday at the headquarters of the Santa Fe National Forest, visiting with dozens of forest service employees (the U.S. Forest Service sits within the purview of the Department of Agriculture).
Perdue, calling on forest service workers to step up in the coming fire season, mentioned a recent “fire funding fix” he’d supported and was approved by Congress earlier this year. The measure would put more money toward wildfire fighting.
“The ball is now in our court,” he said. “We’ve got the talking part done.”
Ryan Swazo-Hinds, a biologist with the pueblo of Tesuque, said the region was on a sort of knife’s edge with ongoing drought and expected fire risk this summer.
“Safety has to be our main concern,” Swazo-Hinds said. “Human life and our resources — water. But fire does play a role.”
Asked whether in talking with Perdue he got the sense agency leaders have their heads fully wrapped around fire concerns, Swazo-Hinds said, “It sounds like it.”
Perdue, as part of his tour, was briefed by forest service officials at the city’s Nichols Reservoir about fire mitigation efforts.
The reservoir has about half of the water level it should have by this time of the year.
“We were supposed to have had some of the monsoons by now,” said Gov. Susana Martinez, examining maps of past and planned fuel treatments.
Those should come when the Midwestern parts of the country start to “bake,” a forest service employee said brightly.
“I won’t tell the corn-growers that,” Perdue quipped.