HB 2058 -- Breimeyer Center for Sustainable Food and Farming Systems

Co-Sponsors:  Shoemyer (9), Kreider, Smith, Carnahan

This bill creates the Breimeyer Center for Sustainable Food and
Farming Systems.  The center will assist family farms by
promoting sustainable family farm agriculture, community foods
systems, and food security in Missouri.  The center will advocate
the interests of family farmers and sustainable family farm
agriculture and support research in those areas and is authorized
to provide grants.  The center will provide legal information for
groups wishing to challenge existing or proposed statutes, rules,
or regulations.  Specific methods for a challenge are stated.

The center is to have an executive director and at least one
staff member is to be an attorney licensed to practice law in
Missouri.  The executive director and staff are to be funded
through appropriations.  The center is to be housed primarily at
the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The Breimeyer Center for Sustainable Food and Farming Systems
Governing Board is created and is to consist of six persons
actively engaged in sustainable family farming and three persons
actively engaged in the development of community food systems.
Members will be appointed by the Governor with the advice and
consent of the Senate.  The board is to elect officers and inform
the public about sustainable food and farming innovations,
methods, procedures and information, regulatory and statutory
changes, and other pertinent information.  The board is to hire
the executive director.

The Breimeyer Center for Sustainable Food and Farming Systems
Non-voting Advisory Council is also created by the bill.  The
council is to work with and provide assistance to the governing
board.  The council will consist of the Governor or his or her
designee, the directors of the departments of Conservation,
Economic Development, and Natural Resources or their designees,
the president of the governing board, the Dean of the College of
Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and the chairman of the
Department of Rural Sociology of the University of Missouri-
Columbia.

Pesticide registration fees are raised from the current annual
rate of $15 per product to $150 per product.  One-third of those
fees collected will remain in the Pesticide Project Fund and two-
thirds are to be transferred to the Breimeyer Center for
Sustainable Food and Farming Systems Fund which the bill also
creates.  The Director of the Department of Agriculture is given
the authority to deny, cancel, or revoke a pesticide registration
if creditable findings indicate the pesticide is dangerous or
harmful to persons or the environment.

Missouri House of Representatives
Last Updated October 11, 2002 at 9:03 am