Bill > A732

Introduced Session

This bill would require the Department of Agriculture (DOA), within 180 days after the bill's effective date, and acting in consultation and cooperation with the Department of Environmental Protection and the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES) Cooperative Extension, to commence and complete a comprehensive study to review and evaluate the regulatory compliance cost obligations applicable to specialty crop growers in New Jersey (i.e., persons who grow or otherwise cultivate or manage a specialty crop). "Specialty crop" is defined to mean any fresh fruits, dried fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, culinary herbs or spices, medicinal herbs, or other horticulture, floriculture, greenhouse, or nursery plants, which: are subject to human cultivation or management; are produced and used for human food, medicinal purposes, or aesthetic gratification; and satisfy all other eligibility criteria, established by the United States Department of Agriculture, as may be necessary to be categorized as a specialty crop under federal law. The term would not include: any plants that are federally designated as controlled dangerous substances; any plants, such as canola, soybeans, sugar cane, hay, alfalfa, clover, barley, rye, sorghum, millet, cotton, flax, rice, quinoa, corn, cottonseed, flaxseed, tobacco, hemp, mustard, peanuts, safflower, sugarcane, sugar beets, and sunflowers, which are cultivated, managed, or used for seed oil, for bio-energy, for animal feed or foraging, for grain, or for fiber; any naturally occurring population of wild plants that is collected and used by people for food, medicinal purposes, or aesthetic gratification, unless such wild plant population is subject to management or monitoring by humans, as necessary to ensure the population's long-term sustainability; and any other plants that are expressly identified, by the United States Department of Agriculture, as being ineligible for specialty crop categorization under federal eligibility standards. In conducting the regulatory compliance cost study pursuant to the bill, the DOA and its consulting partners would be required to: (1) review the laws, rules, and regulations that are pertinent to specialty crop growers and growing operations in the State and identify all regulatory compliance costs for which specialty crop growers are liable; (2) survey and consult with specialty crop growers in each of the northern, central, and southern regions of the State in order to determine the actual costs expended by such growers, the nature and extent of any cost variability, in this regard, the factors contributing to such cost variability, and the specific concerns of in-State growers in relation to their payment of such regulatory compliance costs; and (3) compare the in-State cost-related data obtained by the DOA and its consulting partners with comparable data obtained from other states in order to determine whether, and the extent to which, the regulatory compliance costs expended by specialty crop growers in New Jersey equal, exceed, or otherwise differ from, the regulatory compliance costs expended by specialty crop growers in those other states. Within 180 days after the regulatory compliance cost study is completed, the DOA, in cooperation with its consulting partners, would be required to prepare and submit, to the Governor and Legislature, a written report of findings and recommendations from the study, including recommendations for the adoption, revision, or repeal of relevant laws, rules, and regulations, and the undertaking of other appropriate actions, by the Governor, the Legislature, and the State's executive departments and agencies, as may be necessary and appropriate to reduce or eliminate the burden of regulatory compliance costs on the State's specialty crop growers. Thirty days after the submission of the report, the bill would expire.

AI Summary

Committee Categories

Mike Torrissi (R)*, 

Introduced, Referred to Assembly Commerce, Economic Development and Agriculture Committee (on 01/09/2024)

Official Document