Thursday, January 08, 2009

By TONYA WIESER
Staff Reporter

ALLIANCE - Gov. Dave Heineman officially designated Box Butte County as a "Livestock Friendly" county under a state program coordinated by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture this week.

"Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in our state, and sometimes on the eastern part of the state they tend to forget that," Heineman said.

One of every three jobs in the state is related to agriculture, he added.

"It is the economic engine of this state and when agriculture is doing well so is main street Nebraska," he said. "When agriculture is doing well, Alliance, Chadron, Hemingford, Scottsbluff and all across the state the main streets are doing very, very well."

Livestock receipts represent 65 percent of the ag economy, he said.

"We need that strong livestock industry and we want to continue to see a growing and expanding industry, because it is important to our state and that is why for me these designations are very important," Heineman said.

State Sen. LeRoy Louden joined the governor for the announcement at the Alliance Country Club, along with county government officials, local livestock producers, local FFA Chapters, Box Butte Development, the Chamber of Commerce and the mayor of Alliance. Heineman presented the Box Butte County Commissioners with a plaque marking the designation.

"This designation is quite important for someone who wants to come into the community and locate some kind of livestock facility or something, because this lays the groundwork so that it can be done," Louden said.

Cattle helped the state come out of the last recession, he said.

"The people that were doing the forecasting were sure that they weren't going to have any money, until that fall in December when fat cattle hit a dollar a hundred," he said. "I told them to not kid themselves. They will have money coming in next April 15 because when people are selling fat cattle at those prices somebody is going to be paying taxes. And sure enough we came out of it, and that just goes to show that whenever we do well in agriculture then all parts of Nebraska does well."

In 2003 the Nebraska Legislature established the Livestock Friendly County Program, allowing any county in Nebraska to pass a resolution designating itself as "livestock friendly". To date 11 counties including Sheridan, Box Butte, Lincoln, Adams, Dawes, Garden, Hitchcock, Keith, Morrill, Wayne and Webster, have been certified as livestock friendly in the state.

To apply for a livestock friendly designation, a county must hold a public hearing, secure a declaration acknowledging the importance of livestock to the well-being of the county, submit a narrative that describes how the county meets the intent of the Livestock Friendly program and provide copies of the documents and regulations associated with site-selection criteria for livestock operations. The designation helps guarantee that those operations won't run into zoning restrictions or other obstacles.

"As most people know I work on the railroad here in Alliance and I will be the first to say that Alliance was, is and always will be an agriculture community. It is the backbone of our county and the Panhandle," said Alliance Mayor Dan Kusek, "This is just another thing that will assist in agriculture and livestock growth."