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With the highest population density in the nation, New Jersey has experienced an unprecedented loss of farms and depletion of its land, environmental and natural resource bases. These combined events threaten the future quality of life for all residents in the Garden State. In particular, agriculture faces numerous challenges that threaten its viability and sustainability. These include increased regulation, rising production costs, right-to-farm issues, wildlife damage, and rising taxes. Unexploited market opportunities and limited access to innovations that would enhance prosperity, stewardship potential and compatibility with other land uses also severely impact sustainability and viability. Allied industries, such as food processing and aquatic organism production, also face major constraints including regulatory and permitting challenges, a poorly skilled workforce, limited access to technology and business/marketing expertise. Given the impacts and public benefits of the agricultural and food complex, not only in rural areas but statewide, these constraints impinge upon assuring food security, nutrition and health, water quality and supply, environmental sustainability, economic development and quality of life in the Garden State.

The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) and Cook College carry forward the land-grant mission of teaching, research, and outreach at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. New Jersey’s land grant system is active at every level of proposing, refining and implementing innovative solutions to issues facing agriculture, aquaculture, the food industry and the greater state-wide community. The research and extension faculty develop new technologies, services, and activities that contribute directly to quality of life in New Jersey by enhancing the long-term performance of agriculture and the food system, the viability of communities and the sustainability of the environment, while providing vital short-term assistance as well.

The New Jersey agricultural community is faced with a multitude of challenges – unlike their competition in the global marketplace – which have contributed to the declining viability of agriculture and the loss of farmland activities.

Agriculture is a system that impacts the public in vast ways and is intrinsically linked to many economic and social aspects of life – not only in New Jersey’s rural communities, but in the state’s urban and suburban communities as well.

Researchers at Cook/NJAES can bring about new technologies, services and activities that would enhance the long-term future performance of agriculture, while providing much needed short-term assistance to the agricultural community.

The NJAES has identified key research and outreach programs including the Food Innovation Research and Extension (FIRE) Center which will yield valuable impacts such as identifying new markets for New Jersey agricultural products, assisting in the development of new businesses based on value-added agricultural products, enhancing the viability and profitability of existing food companies by improving their business and technical capabilities, creating more viable start-up food companies by providing needed business and technical expertise and creating a better trained workforce via training programs.

NJAES struggles annually to respond to budgetary demands and the levels of reduction it has experienced over the last three years is equal to 18 percent when inflation is accounted for. Any additional budget reduction would be devastating to the ability of the NJAES to serve the citizens of New Jersey.

The NJAES does not benefit from student tuition even though it is funded in the Higher Education budget, and, therefore, cannot offset the budget reductions with tuition increases.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the delegates to the 89th State Agricultural Convention assembled in Long Branch, New Jersey on February 4, 2004 urge the State Legislature to consider full restoration of the NJAES budget to $27,556,000, the level originally appropriated in FY '02, as a way to address pressing agricultural needs in the State of New Jersey.