Plans for Arkansas Agriculture, Food Safety Touted at OFPA Meeting

SPRINGDALE, Ark. — When Richard E. Bell first came to Arkansas in 1977 to run Riceland Foods, he asked about getting an appointment to meet the state’s secretary of agriculture. He was surprised to learn then that there was neither a secretary nor a department of agriculture. About 30 years later, he is currently wrapping up his first year on the job as Arkansas’s first secretary of agriculture.

Now that the state has an agriculture department, which was created by an act of the 2005 General Assembly, Bell said the agency’s job is “to provide Arkansas agriculture an advocate within the state government.” Speaking on March 29 to the Ozark Food Processors Association’s 100^th annual convention, Bell said the department’s work “in the longer run could lead to some improvements in farm income.”

Arkansas is among the top 10 states in cash farm receipts almost every year, Bell said, “but no one seems to know it.” Half of that revenue comes from the poultry industry, another 35 percent comes from row crops (rice, soybeans and cotton) and another 10 percent from wheat. The remaining 5 percent consists of “specialty crops” such as fruits, wine and catfish.

Much of the state’s agricultural products are exported because of the state’s advantageous geographic location. “But when it comes to value-added forestry products, we’re not even in the top 20,” Bell said, even though 56 percent of the state’s land area is forest. State government is 'beginning to put together an initiative to work on this.”

Bell said he is serving as secretary until the end of Gov. Mike Huckabee’s term in January. During his tenure, he has a few items he wants to accomplish. His first goal is to improve and expand farmers’ markets around the state. “I see that as a market outlet for produce from small farms,” he said.

Bell also wants to serve as an advocate for the state’s specialty crops, an emerging project that might benefit Eastern Arkansas before an imbalance between large farms and small farms increases. “The way to get the population distributed more evenly and maintain those communities would be to have some small farms doing other things.”

Bell also wants to promote production and marketing of biofuels in Arkansas. “It gives us another dimension of demand for our farm products,” he said. “There will be a place in the fuel market for ethanol and biodiesel.”

The state’s nutritional needs, particularly the school lunch program, is another of Bell’s targeted areas for improvement. His other areas of focus are to involve more of the state’s small businesses in exporting products and to improve the sourcing and identification of cattle amid the BSE crisis.

At the University of Arkansas, the Center for Food Safety, one of the three centers that make up the Division of Agriculture's Institute of Food Science and Engineering, will focus its research efforts on “the biology of foodborne pathogens,” Steven Ricke, the new center director, told the OFPA convention. “The more we know about the biology, the more we can predict what the organism is going to do and maybe stay a step or two ahead of it.”

The consumer should also be viewed as a part of the food safety equation, Ricke said. “It’s our job to make people realize what they can do to make things better. I get questions all the time that tells me there are still a lot of gaps there.”

Visibility at the state and local level is critical for the center, he noted. On a national basis, the center is well positioned because of Northwest Arkansas’s prominence in food processing and production. “I think we have a good potential here to be a model system for ways to interface between academics and industry,” Ricke said.

The center's potential for national and international impact will depend on its reputation. Ricke said a reputation for producing the best and most applicable science will assure its impact.    

The OFPA convention this year attracted 78 exhibitors with over 450 people attending. Thirteen University of Arkansas students were awarded scholarships sponsored by OFPA and its members. The addition of a 14^th scholarship beginning next year — the Justin R. Morris Scholarship — was announced by the association in honor of Morris, the OFPA executive vice president and director of the UA Division of Agriculture's Institute of Food Science and Engineering.

OFPA officers elected for 2006-2007 are Steve Crider of Gerber Products Co., president; Earl Wells of Allen Canning Co., vice president; Justin Morris of the UA IFSE, executive vice president; Renee Threlfall of the UA IFSE, secretary, and Mike Heilman of the UA IFSE, treasurer.