Jackson Free Press

Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell is under attack this year, and faces stiffer competition than in earlier years.

Spell, 64, is defending his record against two challengers, Republican Max Phillips and Democrat Rickey Cole.

Spell has held his office since 1996, first as a Democrat and then later as a Republican. Spell, a practicing veterinarian since 1970, stands behind his accomplishments in the agriculture industry, including making inroads in food source labeling, improving health standards, creating the "Make Mine Mississippi" labeling initiative and the new farmer's market on High Street in Jackson.

Spell, last elected as a Democrat in 2003, relies particularly upon his reputation as a watchdog of product safety.

"Food safety has always been a full-blown issue," Spell said at a recent speech at the Neshoba County Fair. "You know better about that now than ever. We have a stringent testing program. Several weeks ago, we tested catfish. We began to find residue of a (dangerous) antivirus. We have zero tolerance for that. We took it off the shelves of the stores in Mississippi. It was contaminated."

Spell boasts that the FDA took second place in discovering the health issue connected with the Asian catfish.

Spell said he has done all he could to promote the development and retail of Mississippi-grown products.

"We're growing vegetables, and we're seeing those vegetables all over the great United States and up in Canada. We've had great opportunity for diversification and the department of agriculture has promoted that," Spell said.

'Totally Out of Line'
Republican Party candidate Max Phillips, 60, has done everything in his power to distance himself from his new fellow Republican. Spell switched parties in 2005, after the fiasco of the Mississippi Beef Processors plant, possibly to re-kindle waning support in a state that tends to vote Republican in statewide elections.

Phillips, an agriculture teacher and beef farmer, sees Spell's connection to the $55 million fiasco as a weakness and heartily exploits that issue.

"Anybody that's involved in production agriculture would have known that that project was due to fail just for the scope and size of it at its earliest beginning," Phillips said. "It was totally out of line with reality in terms of the needs of the slaughter industry. The beef cattle industry can never be designed to operate properly if your ultimate product is hamburger meat. That's the cheapest cut that we get out of the beef carcass and we have to be able to shoot for higher cuts of meat to establish a higher value for the animal it would process."

Phillips said his main goal is to "restore the competence of the staff" in the agricultural commissioner's office, as well as "bring back accountability."

He said that he does not consider the free market an outright enemy of Mississippi farmers, but does see state farmers at a disadvantage within it.

"I'm not opposed to the international competition or marketplace, but rather than open or free trade, it ought to be fair trade. Our domestic producers need to be able to compete fairly against competition," Phillips said.

Phillips is also pushing to foster the introduction of more locally grown produce into the market.

Think Local, Grow Local
Rickey Cole, 40, a farmer and the former Mississippi Democratic Party chairman who is running unopposed in the Democratic primaries, wants the state to help small farms afford product liability insurance—an inhibitive cost that keeps small farms out of the major playing fields dominated by agro-businesses.

Cole also wants more processing facilities in the state. "There are not enough processing facilities in this state that can take the farmer's raw product and add value to it through processing. We have a big production of sweet potatoes in Northeast Mississippi, but there's no processing facility for canning or freezing in the area," Cole said, adding that Bruce Foods, out of New Iberia, La, was considering locating a sweet potato processing plan in the Columbus area, but dropped the idea around the same time as the beef plant debacle.

Cole envisions a quick freezing processing plant, possibly on Woodrow Wilson Blvd., in Jackson, which can slice and freeze the surplus squash and vegetables in the summer, and help farmers survive the plummeting produce value during the summer glut.

He said locally produced goods are the way of the future, whether or not people are ready to accept it.

"Fuel prices will continue to rise, even if we discover alternative energy sources, because newly industrialized nations are requiring more and more fuel for their own needs. Eventually, the price of fuel will force us all to shop and produce locally."