Pritzker touts ag support track record

FUNKS GROVE, Ill. — Gov. JB Pritzker’s career as a venture capitalist and philanthropist from Chicago seems far removed from agriculture, yet they parallel one another, according to the two-term governor.

“My business background isn’t in agriculture. It was in manufacturing, but just like my own businesses, I want our state’s ag industry to grow and to keep growing and be profitable. Whether we’re talking about soybeans, corn, wheat, cattle, pork, dairy, or so many others, Illinois farmers and processors have made our state among the biggest food producers in the entire nation,” Pritzker said at the Illinois Agricultural Legislative Roundtable.

“You are filling our family’s pantry, you’re keeping our families fed, you’re employing our people, and these days, especially, you’re doing it in the face of what I would describe as major headwinds.”

Pritzker, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Darren Bailey, spoke separately at the forum, organized by Illinois Farm Bureau and held at historic Funk Farms in McLean County.

Those “headwinds” include high fertilizer and fuel costs, natural disasters, low crop prices, canceled export contracts, the Iran and trade wars, and no new farm bill.

“Agriculture drives an enormous part of Illinois’ economy. We’ve got to do all that we can to weather the storm and get Washington to take the different course,” Pritzker said.

“State government can’t do a lot about stopping a war in Iraq or trade wars with the rest of the world. What we can do is help our farmers with things like promoting new ag trade, fixing rural roads and bridges and river ports, expanding agricultural education, attracting more food processors, investing in our rural communities and making it easier to do business in Illinois.

“In 2019, and again in 2022, I worked with the ag associations to secure multiyear commitments from Taiwan to purchase nearly $5 million in corn and soybeans.

“When tariffs hit farmers last year, I declared an agricultural trade crisis, which directed our state government agencies to promote domestic markets for agricultural commodities, which has already resulted in new and expanding contracts to do business with other states.”

Pritzker noted the steps Illinois has taken to counter the trade and tariff issues, including trade agreements with Mexico and Indonesia, and meeting with trade partners in Canada, Europe and other parts of Asia.

“I also fought hard to get a $51 million federal grant for the Illinois Fermentation and Agricultural Biomanufacturing technology hub. Not only did we get that grant, but we’re also bringing with it $680 million of external investment in Illinois — good for Illinois agriculture,” he said.

“I enacted biodiesel incentives that have brought major investment and jobs for companies like Incobrasa in Gilman, and made our state the third largest biodiesel producer in the country, rivaling for No. 2. And Illinois is now a hub of activity for sustainable aviation fuel production companies.

“For me, this is all about bringing new businesses to farmers while supporting economic and national security.

“We’ve also attracted new, ag-related investments in jobs from businesses like Primient, Cronus Chemicals, Silesia, and ADM just recently announced it’s expanding its facilities.”

Following the governor’s opening statements, the format then turned to a question-and-answer session. The questions were provided by those attending the event, and IFB President Philip Nelson served as moderator and presented the questions.

Fertilizer prices are a big concern. Four companies basically produce about 87% of the fertilizer used by farmers. Harvest is around the corner and there’s going to be sticker-shock when a lot of producers start looking at fertilizer prices.

Pritzker: We’ve got to elect people who are actually going to fight for you because in Washington they are not. There’s no farm bill. There’s nothing that deals with this problem. The tariffs and the trade wars have caused a lot of problem. We didn’t have this problem before the Strait of Hormuz was closed.

Then there’s the trade war with Canada, and the price of potash going up. It’s back down a little bit, but still up. Trade wars will do that.

I’m in favor of targeted tariffs to protect industries in the U.S., but not just across the board, massive tariffs, where I think about $170 billion was collected already. It turns out the Supreme Court ruled it was illegal. That’s $170 billion that came out of everybody’s hide, but it’s not going back to your pockets. It’s going to back companies like Amazon. The very largest companies are getting the huge checks.

The second part of that is, I heard a really great idea, and that was the possibility of creating a strategic fertilizer reserve for the U.S. I don’t think anybody realized that we could be in a situation that we’re in right now, and I think that realization has led to a lot of new thinking. This is one thing that I think could get done.

But, again, these are these are problems with the federal government. I can’t change the price of fertilizer in the Illinois. What I can do is fight like hell for you and make sure that we’re electing people who are gonna go make that happen in Washington.

Illinois went from being a net exporter to a net importer of energy. I also think the data center situation worries a lot of us, and what impact that will have on electricity. Agriculture may not be the highest user of electricity, but we’re toward the top.

Pritzker: Let me start by correcting a misperception that you just articulated which is that we are a net importer of electricity. We’re not. Our state is a net exporter of electricity. In fact, we only consume about 80% of the electricity that we produce in the state, and it’s been important to me to make sure we’re not stopping energy development.

I’ve been growing it since I took office and I signed into law two bills over the course of two years. One is to remove the moratorium on small nuclear, the other is to remove the moratorium on large-scale nuclear. We’ve also built up significantly the amount of renewals in the state. We are the best state in the country for nuclear.

The reason we’re the best state for that is we already have nuclear power plants here. We don’t have the problem that so many other states have, which is a fear of having nuclear. We’ve operated them safely for 30 years in Illinois. I kept a couple of those plants online with CEJA, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. They were going to close. That would cost a whole lot of money for people here.

What’s maybe not fully understood about electricity prices is they’re going up all over the country. Illinois is some outlier. The reason is, in part, because of higher usage, and that’s not just data centers, but a lot of other things.

Another reason for it is the regional transmission organization. We’re in the MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, region here. Basically, the southern two-thirds of Illinois is in one region with a whole bunch of other states, and the northern one-third of Illinois is in another region with a bunch of other states.

It means that we’re all of the same grid. For example, when they are using a lot of electricity in Kansas, you’re paying for it. In northern Illinois, when they’re using a lot of electricity in Ohio, those people who live there are paying for it. It really shouldn’t be that way.

Those regional transmission organizations are run by people who really don’t want to expand. They’re actually in the energy business. They don’t really want to expand the amount of electricity available, so they can be slow to connect all of the new projects that we’ve had online and ready to go in Illinois and across the country.

It’s disturbing, and together with a whole bunch of Democratic and Republican governors, we’ve conveyed that to the Trump administration. We need new reforms of those regional transmission organizations, because we need to bring your electricity prices down. One way to do that is to make sure that we don’t have every state eating up, frankly, states like ours, energy.

How many data centers do we need? Who is in charge of them? It just seems like it’s a race to see who can site these the quickest.

Pritzker: What we want, I think importantly, is for local governments, both county governments, township and cities, to make their own decisions about whether they want to have a data center located there. You have those decisions to make for zoning and other things when a new business that comes to your city or your county. You should have that same decision-making ability with a data center that comes to you.

We need to set standards at the state levels for data centers to bring in their own power and make sure that isn’t going to affect your power bills. Because, let’s face it, they love to eat all of us alive with their high power costs to us because they don’t really care. The large tech companies don’t really care. They’ve got the money. They would rather not have to pay it.

I will give some credit. I just read about Microsoft, which just offered, I believe in Kentucky, to give back all of the property taxes that other people are paying and give back all the tax benefits that they receive because they recognized that they’ve become highly unpopular in these large data centers.

I think they will do what we want them to do, and we’ll be able to get that done, in my view, either in the November session, or in the next year between January and May. Meanwhile, I’m not going to allow any of those tax incentives (for data centers) to go through until we get that done.

The ag community has pushed hard for estate tax reforms. Under current state law, taxes must be paid on the entire estate if it’s valued above a $4 million threshold. The Family Farm Preservation Act that was on the table, but not passed in the legislature, would raise Illinois’ estate tax exemption to $6 million.

Pritzker: It’s important for me to say up front that JB Pritzker does not benefit from the Family Farm Preservation Act, although there are some people who think that any change in estate tax would benefit me.

The reality is that we ought to change the estate tax in Illinois, and I am going to support it in this session and have been supporting the Family Farm Preservation Act.

It’s time for us to make sure that farmers are able to hand their farms down through the generations, as you have been over many generations up to now, and do it with less tax on that transfer.

What can we do as an ag sector to get our points of view across, so that urban person understands Illinois agriculture?

Pritzker: This may sound odd since the person that proceeded me on stage is actually a farmer, but I would say elect people who actually are going to do things that help you build your businesses.

I heard that he said something like you have to cut property taxes and have a 1% cap. I would love to do that. Now tell me how you’re going to pay for your schools, how you’re going to pay for your local government.

I have increased education funding, which is about 60% to 65% of your property tax bill. I’ve increased education funding by $3 billion a year.

I did that for two reasons. One, we need to invest in education, and the other reason is because it allows local government, local school boards to lower property taxes, or at least stop raising property taxes.

We were the worst in the nation when I took office with 24% funding for education from the state. That means it has to be made up for by local property taxes. The U.S. average from state government is 46%. We’re still only at 40% and we started at 24%. So, I feel pretty good about the progress we’ve made and we still have more to do.

I implore you, go to your school board and tell your school board, tell the park board, then tell the library board, and tell the local government, they’ve been getting more money from state government. We’re all challenged by the current circumstances coming from the federal government, but it is time to ameliorate those property taxes.

My opponent served on a school board for 17 years and voted 13 times to raise property taxes by 81%. So, he has no legs to stand on in talking about lowering property taxes when he raised them by 81%.