MARTINSBURG — With dairy cows and farm equipment as a backdrop, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Thursday visited a Blair County farm to celebrate administrative changes to speed up the permitting process in the agricultural industry.
The Kulp Dairy Farm is beginning an expansion project to build out its operations to add nearly 1,000 dairy cows and boost its milk supply sold to the Land O’Lakes grocery brand.
The dairy farm already has 2,900 milking cows, operates at three locations and employs 47 workers full-time.
Kyle Kulp, one of the family’s third-generation farmers, said the project may count among the largest on-farm infrastructure investments in the history of Pennsylvania farming. He credited the Shapiro administration with delivering on a key stormwater construction permit more than four months sooner than expected.
“I know that progress can often be slowed by a permit process that seems very unwieldy, very confusing, and very difficult. We have worked to change that. We now have predictability in our process,” Shapiro said.
It was the second public appearance this week in which the governor touted changes to hasten government processes to serve residents. On Tuesday, he highlighted changes that slashed wait times for phone calls to the Unemployment Compensation Service Center and efforts to expand opportunities to receive assistance in person.
The administration announced this week that the Department of Environmental Protection expanded its streamlined permitting program, SPEED, to allow expedited reviews of air quality, dam safety, oil and gas well pad construction, wetland and waterway encroachment and additional erosion and sedimentation permit applications.
Chris Hoffman, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, said Shapiro is delivering on promises he made about agriculture during his gubernatorial campaign.
Shapiro centered agriculture in Pennsylvania’s newest economic development strategy, the first created in nearly two decades. His administration “fully funded” the PA Farm Bill at $13.8 million annually, committed more than $65 million to mitigate bird flu and created a $10 million innovation grant program that aided 88 farms and organizations, with the governor seeking an additional $13 million for the initiative.
Hoffman is a first-generation farmer who began his career in the 1990s. He said that for perhaps the first time, he believes the opportunity exists to enter farming as a viable career opportunity as he had three decades ago.
“It really is important that family farms have the opportunity to continue to turn generation after generation, to be able to build and continue to thrive as a family farm,” Hoffman said.
According to Shapiro, the Department of Agriculture processed 70,000 permits at a rate of 70% faster compared to before he took office. The Department of Environmental Protection eliminated 98% of its backlog for permits, he said, adding that of the hundreds of thousands of permit applications reviewed across varied agencies, just five were refunded application fees for straying from the promised timeline under the administration’s money-back guarantee.
“We’re putting our money where our mouth is. We believe in the systems we’ve built and we believe they can move quickly and we believe in giving you the peace of mind to know if we tell you it’s going to take a month, it’s really going to take a month,” Shapiro said.