Agriculture:

 

Here in West Virginia, we only produce somewhere around eight hundred million dollars’ worth of the eight billion dollars’ worth of food we consume every year, leaving us with a food-import deficit of more than seven billion dollars.

 

Making major investments in agriculture as part of an economic diversification initiative would allow us to address the food-import deficit and put an entire generation of small West Virginia farmers on a path to prosperity. 

 

If elected, I will support:

 

•The creation of a State-owned public bank to give small West Virginia farmers the means to grow and produce on a larger scale, ushering in a new-wave of innovation and revenue generation.

 

•Removing overburdensome government regulations on industrial hemp farmers and investing in downstream industries like hemp plastic and biofuel initiatives as part of a broader plan to diversify the economy and put West Virginians back to work.