ISP-2025-098 meeting recap

You've got to find, and again, it's going to be up to the vet school. They've got to find those kids that have the passion for that and want to do that. And you know, that's not easy to do. Again, the acceptance program, and if they will mimic Texas A&M Brent Cochlan, fantastic job out there where they actually look at where the student is from. And that, that weighs very heavily on their acceptance rate. Again, these ranchy kids that want to go back home and work around the farms and stuff for the ones that they're accepting. And there's, you know, again, they're, it's hard to do that when there's applicants that meet the subjective scoring better, but objectively. I mean, they meet the objective scores better, but the subjective score is who is going to actually stick in that and want to do that. Yeah. And again, expanding our footprint with the mid level practitioner, I think helps something. Again, when we expand that toward CVTs and VTSS can do some of that work, which we did two years ago, that helps something that expands our footprint in the state, you know, by expanding who could come out and deliver that calf. And that is work fine. That is work good. But even finding CVTs, the veterinary text, when you look at the graduate and class at BB, there may be, because I've surveyed hard, I'm trying to hire, there may be one or two kids that want to do large animal, you know, out of the whole class. Yeah. Well, you talked about, and I mean, I'm glad to see that we're hopefully we're getting a pop line. We're looking ten years down the road that maybe this is going to balance out, but even the economics of your age and my age, you know, even outfitting a vet truck to be able to do large animal. What's the cost difference? I hate to even know what the cost difference was for because a truck that we bought and when we were in college is brought, you know, like I bought my first bringing truck for 17,000 now, things, things, things, 80,000. So what is a vet truck cost if you had to outfit it for a large animal to go out and go on a farm? What would you think it cost today? I can help you with that one. I see, and so there are changes already here. It's happening as we speak. In my little town, a mountain home, 13,000 people, we have 33 veterinarians. Now they're all balled up doing small animal medicine, but what's happened is every business reaches critical mass and they reach it reaches its saturation point. 40 miles away. There were three zero veterinarians three years ago. Now they're almost, they're four. Now they're having to branch out. Everybody is, and the vet schools have, as Dr. Plonce spoke, they're taking more kids from the farm, from farm backgrounds because it has to be in your blood. I grew in Mike, 38 years as a vet. It gets a little hard sometimes to get in a truck and go out in the middle of the night and bad weather and go help a farmer. But I just want to sign up for it. That's what you do. So the truck is, like you say, $100,000. The vet box, 30 to $40,000. As you all know, nothing's cheap anymore, and then running that diesel in that truck, right, back and forth to the farm in the middle of the night. And sometimes my young large animal vets tend to be female. They take a helper with them. So it does get expensive. And a lot of times you're able to subsidize that large animal service with your small animal practice, right. So that's why many of them are mixed animal practitioners. But oddly enough, when you think of the barrier to entry to a business of $140,000, that's peanuts compared to what most of these brick and mortars are. So that also, by the way, does encourage more kids to get in the truck, be mobile, go on the farm, and as well as a lot of the mobile space neuter services as well, too. And we are taking a lot of kids. I have about 70 kids a year that come through from the vet schools. And we do go out. We do a lot of outreach. We spade over a thousand stray animals last week in my last year in my clinic alone. And a lot of clinics are doing that now. Dr. Plone does as well. But the reason is we have access to all of these students who are out there who do need to the skills and the training. And so it's coming. It may not be exactly where you are yet, but I don't think it's going to be five to 10 years away. I think it's probably within a couple of years as we talk to these kids and they're taking jobs. So they are moving out into more rural areas and they are taking more and more of those jobs. All right, well, thank you. Thank you, Senator King. Thank you, Dr. Any other questions? Do I hear a motion? Second, all in favor say aye. Opposed? The eyes have it. Thank you guys very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The ISP 2025-97 is to create a sales and use tax exemption for parts and repair for agriculture equipment and machinery. Colleagues, if you remember, Representative Vault and I have tried to run this through fiscal session earlier this year. Just came up a little bit short. Understand some of their concerns with maybe how much it's going to hit the budget. I think we really need to start having that conversation. We are the, I don't think it's a budget of honor that we want to have, but it's we are the number one state for farm bankruptcy. And last time I checked, we are supposed to be having agriculture as the number one industry in the state. And so this just starts that conversation looking into what it would cost to the budget. What can we do? Can't we do? Are colleagues in other states surrounding us? They do this. They do this. And so I think it's long enough in time that we would actually have that conversation and try to do this. So colleagues, that's what this interim study will do. And if Representative Vault doesn't have any questions, we'd be glad to take any questions. So thank you all for bringing this. I'll support this 100%. My dad has been a cattle rancher this whole life. He'll be 90 December the third. There's something he's asked me to do and that was try to get fencing materials exempt from sales tax. That's the next one. That's the next one. I'm kind of, I'm kind of combining them here. I'm sorry. You're good. So let me just ask you a simple question. This would be just like if you're, if you're buying feed at the store, your sales tax is going to be exempt from these supplies and tractor parts. Yes. And we have that, you know, right now we have the card for farms that for the tax that would go on there and be ready to go. Same process. Yes. Same process. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Was this introduced as a bill back during the 2025 session? Okay. And can you remind me because I do not remember what was the fiscal impact that the FNA determined? I'm sorry. I don't remember right now, but that was. That's okay. We can find it. Yes, sir. Thanks. All right. Can I say something to about that though? I will say agriculture brings in over $20 billion to the state of Arkansas. And like he said, we're number one for farmers filing bankruptcy. We have to find some kind of way to help farmers out to stay alive in our state if we want to continue to collect those tax dollars. And also, too, is just want to reference what happened to Delta Pena, Pena in eastern Arkansas. We had to come in and help save that industry. So, you know, I'm sure the fiscal impact will be quite a bit, but it's not going to be even touch anywhere close when we start losing farms and not only just farms. They have tentacles that go all the way down when we start losing other retailers and other folks in there. I just want to make that comment. Representative Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representatives, I really appreciate y'all bringing this I speak to the table. As we all know, it's a really difficult time in the farm environment at the moment. My question is what prohibits an Arkansas farmer say in. Crittenden County going to Tennessee and bond parts with no sales tax. Is there anything? Nothing. What about Missouri? Nothing because I'll just be honest with you. We go up there. Sure. We go up we're 30 minutes from the line in Missouri and we'll go up there. I don't want to do that. My my family's been doing that for years. Don't want to want to stay here in Arkansas. But Arkansas does it is not on the level playing field. Your lives in people dog claw my index is also because they're part of our border. And some of ours are closer to go to Louisiana than what they are even to come on into Arkansas. Sure. It's my understanding that this would cost the state about 21 to 23 and a half million dollars. And do you not believe and I'm framing this sort of a question. Do you not believe that a 21 to 23 million dollar. Hit to the state budget is far less than any other economic development incentives that we give to other projects such as Big River Steel or Green Bay packaging. Yet the farms in Arkansas employ a vastly greater amount of employees than these other economic development projects. What would agree 100% agree. Any other questions in the committee. If not, do I hear a motion and a second. All right. All those in favor say I opposed your motion passes. Thank you committee. Ready for the next ISP Mr. Chair. All right. Last ISP 2025 98 to create sales and use tax exemption for fencing materials and certain. And so forth. So it's the same thing again for fencing materials and so forth like that. Same thing what we did in the tractors. It's just trying to help folks out in the far in the farming and ranching industry. Again multi billion dollar industry number one. Just trying to give a little little break with the same thing on the card. Same thing like you do in the feed. Everything else. We go out of state to buy that stuff because it's tax exempt in other states surrounding us. Same thing. Another thing that's really weird about this is if it's one of those what pretty fences that you see every now and then. Those are tax exempt. There's no cattle farmer using those to keep cattle inside their properties. So it's crazy that that's tax exempt. But what would actually be used by cattle farmer which is fence post the wire is not tax exempt in our state. It's just backwards. Thank you. Any other questions? Did not. Did I hear my. Oh, here we got one. Representative right. Chairman. So on the on the previous ISP. I think it would be it makes perfect sense that it would be very difficult for somebody to walk into. Like a tractor and implement store for example and buy agriculture or buy tractor parts that could be used for something else with fencing. I think fencing has pretty broad application. How would you differentiate for sales tax exemption purposes somebody who was buying. Fencing materials for cattle farm versus somebody that was buying fencing materials just for so we have a perfect question. Glad you asked that we have a tax exemption card for farmers but they have to go to Diffin A and apply for that and so all the steps they have to provide tax receipts and all that stuff. They get that card from 2025. Yes. Okay. I remember that. All right. Very good. Good question. I'm glad you asked that. Thank you. Yes representative. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for recognizing me. I appreciate you guys bringing this because this is affected my district as well. As representative painter knows I've had many farmers reach out to me. They're suffering from the same thing. We're close to that state line and so they're fencing materials big time. They're going across the state line to purchase them and they have to. They've got to do whatever they can to to make it happen. President Moore had the comment and the question of would you know would this compare to other benefits that were offering larger companies and I'd kind of also pose this question. Would we not also be encouraging our local farmers to support our local businesses even more. Would you agree with that? What I totally agree with that and here's for example is I mean look at Greg's farm supply and you're district up there. Okay. Farmers go there but they're not buying all their fencing material over there. They're going right up to the Missouri line, which is another 15 minutes above. So if they could do that there, Greg's farm supply would be booming. Be more than what they already doing that. Exactly. Thank you very much. All right. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'll try and pose this as a question but it's. We do so much in the state of Arkansas to attract new businesses to come and employ our citizens. I don't know if we've ever done a economic development incentive for new farmers to come and raise their families and raise their produce and their crops here in Arkansas. And this touches on both this ISP and the previous one but it is a serious matter in that our farming population is aging out. And if you're lucky, you got some kids that come back and continue your heritage on the family farm. If you're unlucky, you sell out. You have a farm sale. Maybe you sell your equipment, maybe your property. And you retire. And I don't know as much about cattle as I do about row crop, but our farms are getting significantly larger. You've got operators and producers out there that used to be farming on a thousand acres or 800 acres. And now it's much more common to farm 8,000 acres or 10,000 acres. I don't think it takes a very bright individual to understand that in order to have a more contributing members of society, the more number of operators you have, the better it is for our communities. You have to look at this down the road. If the current trend keeps happening, there will be less farmers, less operators farming greater operations. And if we don't incentive us some young person that wants to farm and once that sort of lifestyle, what's going to make Arkansas more attractive than say Tennessee or Missouri or Iowa? And so would you not agree? 100% on the cattle side, I mean, you don't have big farm farming cattle operations in the state of Arkansas. They're not mom and pop farm operations is what makes up most of the cattle in the state of Arkansas. And they're small to medium herds. And so like you said, if they're growing old and getting out and their kids don't want to come back, that's going to be sold and probably not be farm anymore, especially if you're outside an urban area, it may be a new subdivision. Because, you know, to try to help our housing crisis that we have now, all this does is just trying to provide a little help to an industry that has been the number one industry since we have been a state. And we haven't done anything like you said, economic package. And I think it's time to do an economic package for our farmers. All right, committee, any other questions? Senator, Senator King? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Painter, we're working cattle this weekend. Can you run a cut date or do anything? Sure, what time you want me to be there, Senator King?