Letter to the Editor: Agriculture and the races on your ballot
Farming is a big part of the economy in Lenoir, Greene and Jones Counties, and the people who write the state’s laws and decide its court cases shape how farm families work. Early voting runs through 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31, and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Three places on your ballot matter to farms.
The first is the state Senate, where Sen. Brent Jackson of Autryville represents District 9, which includes Jones, Duplin, Pender, Bladen, and most of Sampson County. In 1981, he founded Jackson Farming Company, which grows watermelons, strawberries, pumpkins, sweetpotatoes, corn, wheat, soybeans, peanuts, and flue-cured tobacco. He has served in the Senate since 2011 and chairs the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee and the Appropriations/Base Budget Committee, the panel that writes the state’s budget. He was a primary sponsor of the 2026 NC Farm Act, which passed the Senate 48-0 and became law in June.
Agriculture generates $6.46 billion in economic impact across Senate District 9, including $4.05 billion from food production agriculture, and supports 32,196 jobs and $1.88 billion in wages and salaries. In Jones County alone, agriculture generates $222 million in economic impact and supports about 690 jobs and $39 million in wages, with $194 million of the impact coming from food production agriculture, according to data from the NC Ag Partnership Foundation.
The second is the NC Supreme Court, where Sarah Stevens is a candidate. She represented Surry and Wilkes Counties in the NC House from 2009 to 2026. She chaired the House Elections Law Committee and one of the House’s three Judiciary Committees, voted to override then-Gov. Cooper’s veto of the 2023 Farm Act and supported the 2026 Farm Act. Last October, the Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the Department of Environmental Quality overstepped when it added conditions to animal-waste permits for roughly 2,000 hog, cattle, and poultry farms without going through rulemaking. Justice Trey Allen wrote that rulemaking is “an important check on the regulatory power of administrative agencies.”
The third is the NC Court of Appeals, where three seats are on your ballot. The court is where disputes over the permits and rules farms must abide by get their first appellate review, and in most cases it has the final word. In May 2025, a unanimous panel upheld the dismissal of an animal-rights group’s lawsuit against Burke County poultry producer Case Farms, ruling that the Protection of Animals Act’s exemption for lawful farming covers a poultry operation as a whole. The NC Poultry Federation, NC Farm Bureau and NC Pork Council backed the company, and the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Judge Michael Byrne has been an administrative law judge at the NC Office of Administrative Hearings since 2020 and says he has decided more than 400 cases, with ten affirmed by the Court of Appeals and one by the Supreme Court, none reversed. Judge George Bell has been a Superior Court judge in Mecklenburg County since 2019 and ran his own law firm for 12 years before that. Judge Craig Collins has lived in Gastonia since 1997, spent nine years as an assistant district attorney in Gaston County, served as a district court judge, and was then elected to Superior Court in 2024.
A farm-friendly judiciary means judges who interpret the law as written, giving farmers the predictability they need to plan for the future.
Every vote matters. The 2020 Chief Justice race was decided by 401 votes statewide, about four votes per county, and the 2024 Supreme Court race by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast.
Check your registration, review your sample ballot, and make a plan to vote at ncsbe.gov. Eligible voters can register and vote at the same time during early voting, which ends at 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31. In agriculture, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and voting is how farm families get a seat.
Adam Caldwell
Executive Director, NC Ag Partnership
