Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy unveiled news that he has an executive order he plans to sign that would create a new department: The Alaska Department of Agriculture.
In a press release he said the department’s mission is to bolster the agricultural capacity of Alaska, and create more economic activity and food security.
Currently, there is a Division of Agriculture in the Department of Natural Resources, but a new department creates a new cabinet member.
The executive order will be introduced on the first day of the upcoming legislative session on Jan. 21.
Alaska imports about 95% of its food products.
“The COVID pandemic was a wakeup call. It revealed how much Alaska had become dependent on functioning supply chains and how quickly a disruption at West Coast ports could wreak havoc in Alaska,” said Dunleavy in a statement. “The Department of Agriculture’s mission will be to provide expert support for new and established farmers and ranchers and administer programs that improve Alaska’s food security. This will also grow the state’s economy with new jobs and commercial activity. I look forward to working with lawmakers in the upcoming session on this plan for future economic growth and greater food security for all Alaskans.”
The new department will continue all functions currently carried out by the Division of Agriculture but will be better positioned to effectively carry out its mission, his office said.
The move has the support of the Alaska Farm Bureau and the Alaska Food Policy Council.
“Reestablishing the Alaska Department of Agriculture under the Executive Branch demonstrates Governor Dunleavy’s ongoing commitment to Alaskan agriculture,” said Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle. “As a top recommendation of both recent [Alaska] Food Security Task Force reports and a longstanding policy priority of agricultural stakeholders such as the Alaska Farm Bureau, a department dedicated to ensuring stronger strategic alignment with the agriculture industry will result in more focus and attention to Alaskan farmers and ranchers.”
Dunleavy made no mention of the new department when he unveiled his 2026 budget last week.
Unless rejected by a majority lawmakers, the Department of Agriculture would be official on July 1, 2025, the start of the 2026 fiscal year.
The announcement by the governor came with no fiscal note. The budget for the Division of Agriculture in Fiscal Year 2024 was $6,891,400.
A new department would require a new commissioner and at least one deputy commissioner and other positions. They’ll be in charge of Alaska’s biggest agricultural crop: Cannabis.
Earlier in his administration, Dunleavy created a new Department of Health when he split Health off from the Department of Health and Social Services.
Dang. I thought the cash crop was cabbages or giant pumpkins. Nope. It’s dope. Go figure.
Double dang, looks like the #1 cash crop is government.
Government has ZERO business doing this…..just like his BS “immigrant employment office”….
Just more useless bureaucracy. Not good. 🤔
Another way to have more state union employed sucking more of our PFD.
Talk about a waste of funds time and office space.
Any guess what this will cost us.
Don’t you just love it when the “good Ole boys” stick together? Cancel education because they said so back east and take up farming! Dunleavy is in the mood to get shovel ready for the next round of executive orders. Its OK to pretend he’s an executive for two more years! Lordy, Lordy! What next?
Keep growing the government. The most effective democrats in Alaska are Republicans.
My experience with the division of agriculture taught me that it’s just a cash cow (pun intended) for established farmers. Even though I grew up farming, and one of my degrees is in Biology, I was informed that there’s no way for me to participate in any of the programs because I don’t have 5 years recent experience managing a farm. So don’t insult me by mentioning that Alaska imports 95% of our food when the state doesn’t show any interest in correcting that problem. That’s because our politicians are owned by special interest groups, meaning corporate welfare for their political donors.
Well now, the new Commissioner should be off to a running start! He or she will have thousands of acres of empty barley fields at Delta ready for use, similarly-sized unused agricultural lands at Point Mackenzie, grain elevators at Valdez, vacant dairy farms, a creamery and slaughterhouse in Palmer, and a host of other ready-to-use agricultural resources. And all already paid for by the State, too! How great is that?
The future for agriculture in Alaska is bright indeed! Now throw in a little global warming to improve the climate, and it will be even brighter!
Typically I consider WTG’s comments to be leftist and ridiculous but this time… spot on.
Did oil just go up to $120 a barrel?
Do we really need a new department and the increased overhead that goes with a department?
What does the current Division of Agriculture spend $6,891,400 on?
Yes, we need to develop Iands for agriculture and support as much food to be grown or livestock raised locally as possible. But an additional Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner plus more staff sound useless and expensive.
Somehow this appears another state boondoggle in the works.
How many employee positions had to materialize to make sure pot was “ done correctly “
Department of agriculture will require the same. Unless they utilize displaced MatMaid milk state overseer’s.
But in no way will government grow as much as it did under the previous governor.
Agriculture in the cold country means something different, mainly due to the short length of the growing season. The question to answer is how do we get more sustainable statewide?
First thing to do is have the argument about whether it ought to be in the government’s interest to do this?
If the answer to that is yes, then we can step off into some fun stuff. And it won’t be industrial farming in fields.
Rather, it will be similar to what we are seeing out of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service that runs the Master Gardener Program. It will also include some version of modular hydroponics systems (essentially a garden in a connex). Given stable, affordable energy, these things can be sited anywhere in the state. Hydroponics systems are already commercially available and widely used by gardeners to start and grow plants in the winter.
This will even make the greens happy, as it will move us toward sustainability. Anything that makes us less reliant on the long logistics tail to food from the Lower 48 will be a positive, as long as it is the marketplace that makes the decisions rather than the self-identified Smart Guys of the legislature and elected governments at the state and local levels.
There is a way, probably lots of ways, to do this. Nice to see a start. Given our history in massive projects here in Alaska, we’ll probably screw it up. If it is allowed to operate in a distributed manner, there are a lot of paths to positive outcomes. Cheers –
Oh, Jeez! Another worthless State bureaucracy in the making!
It’s cheaper to import food than it is to grow it in Alaska. Dumleavey and his ” food security ” in Alaska is a pipedream. Just keep the food stamps rolling so all the potheads can buy their Doritos and hot pockets while gaming all day in their subsidized housing.
And when that food can not be imported, then what?
I wrote Dunleavy and asked him to do something about food security here and to make us more self-sufficient. I prefer not to starve if shipping is cut off.
Whatever you do – don’t look to the government for help.
You still don’t understand that?
Grow a garden.
Grow sprouts indoors.
Forage for berries, fiddle ferns, mushrooms, and roots.
Fish – salmon is THE apex protein source.
Raise chickens.
Raise rabbits.
Hunt.
Raise bees.
Co-op’s, barter, trade.
It’s more accurate to state:
Just keep the unsustainable federal deficit spending subsidizing all the military base contractors, all the so called “workers” in the bloated federal agencies regulating against any reasonable use of our lands, as well as massive spending on state “workers” doing whatever they do during short work weeks instead of anything useful.
As bad as food stamp dependency is, pretending to be a productive and gainfully contributing member of society when dependent on make believe government “work”, which defines the largest percentage of our economy here, is not morally or usefully superior. All these dependencies simply accelerate the pending collapse of our economy.
At which point the cost of locally grown food becomes irrelevant. Starving people become desperate, counting on virtually all our food being transported up from the states remains a sketchy proposition.
Ken Fanning’s book again. Bob Palmer and the “Amber Waves of Green”.
Whatever you do – don’t look to the government for help.
You still don’t understand that?
Grow a garden.
Grow sprouts indoors.
Forage for berries, fiddle ferns, mushrooms, and roots.
Fish – salmon is THE apex protein source.
Raise chickens.
Raise rabbits.
Hunt.
Raise bees.
Co-op’s, barter, trade.
Oh gee, here we go again. Another useless state agency is going to magically make it cost effective to produce here. Everything that the Division of Ag touched turned into a smelly brown substance and then failed. Like the giant six pack out in the middle of Valdez Harbor. Or the failed packing plants. Or the failed dairies.
A new state department is not going to lengthen the growing season.
A new state department is not going to make equipment less expensive.
A new state department is not going to make fertilizer less expensive.
A new state department is not going to make seed less expensive.
A new state department is not going to make it possible to compete with Safeway, Fred Meyer, Costco, et.al. Nothing against them, they are doing what they do. But they have tremendous economy of scale working in their favor. Even things that are produced or caught here are more expensive here than in the lower 48.
A new state agency is not going to lower the cost of shipping in all of the inputs required to produce.
A new state agency is not going to make fuel less expensive.
There will just be more useless bureaucrats. Back in 2004 we purchased a state ag parcel. It took 4 months to get entry after we had plunked down the down payment. The Soil Service in Delta kept putting off processing the paperwork They said they just couldn’t do the job. WTF? A guy at the Soil Service in Fairbanks suggested that I go to the Corps of Engineers since they were the ones to sign off on it anyhow and they had a time limit from the time an application landed on their desk till they had to do something. They tried to put me off too, but I came in and dropped an application on their desk, looked a the person and said “tick tick tick”. Even after I fulfilled all the bureaucratic nonsense I still got delay after delay. I later found out that all my paperwork had ridden around in a Div Ag employee’s briefcase for over a month. So instead of marking and cutting line in the fall, in decent weather, I wound up doing so on snowshoes in two or three feet of snow hauling a box of gear on a sled. Then after I had purchased equipment to clear the ground and had done a certain amount of work some woman sued the state over the land sale. They knew she was going to do this. She did this with every sale. They knew she had no standing. The state even paid her and her lawyer to sue them. Div Ag said well you could just give the land back to the state. Meanwhile loosing the money paid out so far, all the effort I had put in, and the gear I had purchased. I waited them out and the whole thing went away after I sat on my hands for a year.
No state chair warmer ever cleared any ground, No state chair warmer ever turned a shovel full of dirt. No state chair warmer ever planted, fertilized, weeded, watered, or harvested one blasted thing except a bi-monthly paycheck.
I don’t trust the split that Dunleavy did with the Health and Social Services considering that Dr. Zink and Elizabeth Ripley would like to push Mental Health (and, likely, lock up all Conservatives and those who did not get the jabs). But, if this new Agriculture department pushes to get local farming and dairy going again, that would be beneficial for Alaskans if shipping from the lower 48 is shut down.
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