Hawks Wants South Dakota Agriculture to Have Strong Voice

A top priority for the challenger is to start a new string of representation on the U.S. House Agriculture Committee if elected to office this fall.

It has been since the middle of the Baby Boomer generation that South Dakota has been shaping ag policy indirectly in the House and Democrat Paula Hawks wants to get back in the mix.

“My number one (goal) is taking a seat on the Ag Committee. It’s a position that somebody in South Dakota has held since 1957. For the first time (since then) we are without a voice on that committee. That’s unfortunate and agriculture has seen some losses because of that.”

Without that direct connection to agriculture, Hawks believes that South Dakota has suffered as a result in a couple of major areas.

“In that time we have lost Country of Origin Labeling, which is huge to producers in South Dakota. We have also lost in the 2014 Farm Bill a great deal of CRP (acres). Those are two huge areas of agriculture that are very important. We didn’t have a strong voice advocating for those two issues.”

According to Hawks, hunting also bears some of the ill effects of lost acres from the Conservation Reserve Program such as habitat and food sources. Hawks is facing incumbent Republican Kristi Noem in the upcoming election on November 8.

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