New farming laws? NC looks to ban raw milk, target lab-grown meat, hinder solar farms

Widespread changes to state laws related to farming and environmental protections are advancing in the state legislature, including in the annual Farm Act as well as other bills.

Agriculture is North Carolina's largest industry, pumping over $100 billion a year into the state economy. But the industry also faces a number of headwinds.

The state's booming population and demand for new homes has made it more lucrative for many farmers to sell their land to housing developers. Bird flu continues to be a threat in a state that's No. 1 nationally for chicken production and No. 2 for turkeys. And retaliatory trade policies from China and other countries, in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs, threaten billions of dollars worth of exports of North Carolina crops and meat alike.

In the face of that uncertainty, state lawmakers are pushing for a number of changes to laws related to farming — rolling back environmental regulations, pushing for new tax breaks and targeting some other industries seen as competing with more established farming interests. The most high-profile is the annual Farm Act, Senate Bill 639.

That bill or others also being debated this week would ban raw milk, enact stricter rules for lab-grown meat, make it harder for solar companies to expand onto farmland, make it harder for people to sue pesticide companies for making them sick, and ban certain foreign companies including China from buying up farmland inside the state.

Because of the bird flu threat, the new Farm Act proposes banning raw milk. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler is pushing for the change, saying raw milk has always been dangerous for people to drink but needs to finally be banned now because of the evidence that it transmits bird flu.

Raw milk is popular among some conservative social media influencers and politicians, however — including Trump's top health official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Troxler acknowledged to his fellow Republicans in the legislature this week that the proposed ban "could be pretty controversial" even if it would protect public health.

Troxler said North Carolina has long allowed people to buy raw milk "with a wink" by allowing it be sold as pet food. But continuing those sales, he said, will only expose more and more people to bird flu in addition to diseases like e-coli, salmonella and listeria that are also found in raw milk, since it's not pasteurized.

"We’ve been playing Russian Roulette with one bullet in the chamber, with these other pathogens," Troxler said Tuesday. "But when you add [bird flu] into the mix, we put two more bullets into that chamber."

But no one from the public spoke out either for or against any of the 20 different sections of the annual Farm Act, including the proposed raw milk ban, when it passed the Senate's agriculture committee on Wednesday. Some of the other provisions within the Farm Act would also:

• Make it harder to sue pesticide companies for health harms, which bill sponsor Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, said is a direct response to the lawsuits over Roundup and its alleged links to cancer. Roundup's current manufacturer, Bayer, paid nearly $10 billion to settle Roundup lawsuits in 2020.
• Increase penalties for people who steal crops or who skirt regulations for shellfish farming.
• Require schools to grant excused absences for students who want to compete in equestrian events or attend livestock shows.

The Farm Act is far from the only agriculture bill lawmakers are pushing toward a vote in the next few days, ahead of next week's deadline for bills to pass or else be considered dead for the rest of the session.

One of the most contentious is House Bill 729, to repeal property tax credits given to solar energy companies.

Troxler and other Republicans said too many farmers have been selling their land to solar companies. That threatens large farming corporations, which typically don't own their own farms but rather contract out to individual farmers around the state. The fewer farms there are, the harder it will be for big companies to find subcontractors to grow their products for them, possibly leading to higher prices, fewer goods or both.

Republican lawmakers are proposing keeping in place tax credits for farmers but repealing tax credits for solar companies. The solar industry opposes the bill. So do Democratic lawmakers, who pointed out that if Republicans are truly concerned about saving farmland they'd also repeal tax breaks given to homebuilders — to make it less lucrative to turn farms into new subdivisions, since housing development is responsible for several times more lost farmland than solar farms.

Democrats asked Wednesday if Republicans planned to also repeal the homebuilder tax credits as well as the solar tax credits; they were told that wasn't on the table. The homebuilder industry contributes substantial amounts of money to Republican politicians in North Carolina.

Joel Olsen, a solar developer, said the proposal will hurt rural counties' ability to fund schools, jails and other parts of their local budget since counties collect far higher property taxes on solar farms than on many other rural land uses, including agricultural farming.

He bought a piece of land in rural Montgomery county, Olsen said, that had previously been worth less than $1,000 a year to the county government in property taxes. But after turning that land into a solar farm, Olsen said, he now pays the county more than $100,000 a year in property taxes.

Also in the state House, lawmakers are taking aim at lab-grown meat in order to protect North Carolina's billions of dollars in annual sales of pork, poultry, beef, seafood and other meat products. Supporters of lab-grown meat say it's an option that tastes similar to the real thing and could be far better for the environment.

House Bill 134, to put stricter labeling rules on lab-grown meat, passed 106-11 last month and is now awaiting action in the state Senate. And on Tuesday the House also pushed forward with House Bill 135, which would ban public K-12 schools, community colleges and public universities from purchasing any lab-grown meats in the future. It passed one of several necessary committees, potentially being set up for a vote by next week.