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After months of grassroots policy work by Ohio Farm Bureau members and countless trips to the Statehouse by the organization’s members and state staff, Ohio agriculture fared well in the 2025-2026 state budget.

Find out what is in (and not in) the over 3,000 page, $60 billion budget that will have implications, both good and not-so-good, for farmers and agribusiness professionals in this Ohio Farm Bureau Podcast Special, as host Ty Higgins chats with OFBF Director of State Policy Evan Callicoat.

Transcript

Ty Higgins [00:00:03] This is an Ohio Farm Bureau Podcast special. The new state budget has been finalized and signed by Gov. Mike DeWine after months of hard work by Ohio Farm Bureau members, our policy team, and lawmakers in Columbus. And with all state budgets, there are some winners. There are some losers. And for organizations like Ohio Farm Bureau, some things we got, some things we simply didn’t get. We’re going to cover all things state budget now with Evan Callicoat. He is director of state policy with Ohio Farm Bureau. Welcome back to the podcast, sir.

Evan Callicoat [00:00:34] Thanks for having me as always, excited to get into it.

Ty Higgins [00:00:36] When you’re Evan’s age, you can be up until three in the morning and recover quite nicely the next day to talk about a 3,000 page document known as the state budget. If you were to categorize one major win for Ohio Farm Bureau and our members in budget, what would it be?

Evan Callicoat [00:00:52] It would be H2Ohio hands down. I think we continue to see great investment from both the governor and the General Assembly into our premier water quality program. We would have liked to see the dollars a little bit higher for sure, but we definitely saw a good bit of money directed towards the Ohio Department of Agriculture portion, which is very, very important to our members. And we’re very glad to see those numbers pretty high, about $53.6 million there. So we’re really very grateful for that funding.

Ty Higgins [00:01:17] I think that the algal bloom forecast and the really noted progress we’ve made in northwest Ohio was a major part of getting that funding into this budget for H2Ohio for agriculture’s sake and helping farmers all over the state continue those great water quality practices to protect Ohio’s great resources we have with the Ohio River and of course Lake Erie to the north. Let’s talk about brownfield remediation. What are some of the things that we worked on and what did we get in the budget here?

Evan Callicoat [00:01:43] Yeah, so we’re again grateful to see continued support and investment for programs like the Brownfield Remediation Program that help locate those economic development projects, big or small away from that prime farmland. So we saw another $200 million invested in that program. I don’t remember the number off the top of my head, but we’ve got to be approaching over a billion dollars nearly for that program so far. And again, anything that keeps good economic development for our state away from taking away of prime farmland, that is something the Ohio Farm Bureau is going to support.

Ty Higgins [00:02:14] Of course, when we work on the budget, it’s not just things for Ohio Farm Bureaus and our members. We have partners that we work with, including the Ohio Department of Agriculture. We’ll talk about some of the work being done along with our partners at ODA in a second, but also the Ohio State University, the College of Food, Ag, and Environmental Sciences. We are, of course, in a major shortage in the vet world as far as agriculture’s concerned. What are we working on in the budget to help alleviate that?

Evan Callicoat [00:02:40] So for the College of Ag, we saw continued support for Extension in 4-H and OARDC, which we are glad to always see. We also saw around $10 million extra dollars invested into the Ohio State College of Veterinary Medicine, specifically targeting trying to increase enrollment of Ohio students. We do have that rural vet shortage that we are trying to find many ways that many of our partners to try to get at, and we’re very glad to see this investment in the legislature with that targeted focus of increasing enrollment of Ohio students. So then hopefully we can see on the back end, a greater amount of that’s out in rural Ohio.

Ty Higgins [00:03:16] We’ve seen a number of challenges in agriculture, not even to mention the weather and markets, but also high path avian influenza was a big stressor for farmers. Thank goodness though, we have facilities at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The animal diagnostic disease lab is getting revamped. There was some money into that program last year and even more this year to kind of amp up what’s happening there to keep our farmers and our food system safe.

Evan Callicoat [00:03:43] Yeah, we were glad to see around an extra $2.5 million dollars get appropriated to two different line items, but they’re both dealing with that animal disease diagnostic lab, um, in light of the high path avian influenza, the outbreak in western Ohio, frankly, the department, uh, their testing was just over tested and understaffed. So we were glad to see some extra funding there to help make sure that we’re keeping those testing in state and getting those producers results as quickly as we can to stay on top of this.

Ty Higgins [00:04:08] Taxes were a big part of the conversation throughout the budget as well. We’ll talk about property taxes in a bit, but a win really for most Ohioans in some income tax cuts.

Evan Callicoat [00:04:18] Yeah, so we did see the Legislature complete their goal of getting Ohio to a flat tax. This has been a goal of the Legislature for some years now. And we see Governor DeWine signed into law last night that our state will have a flat income tax of 2.75% of all income above $26,000. We have supported many of these provisions and we were glad to see that in the final product.

Ty Higgins [00:04:38] A lot of really positive things for agriculture. All the check marks we just talked about. But the governor’s pen went through some things overnight before the budget was finalized that we were hoping would stay in the budget, did not survive the veto pen of Governor DeWine. Among those, something about pesticide licensing. I know that there’s a new podcast that I did with Leah Curtis with Ohio Farm Bureau that you can find at ohiofarmbureau.org. But kind of give us an overview for those who haven’t seen that podcast what this is all about.

Evan Callicoat [00:05:09] Yeah, so some of those changes really just deal with some of the handling and other things you have to do when you have to be licensed as an applicator in the state. And we were looking for a veto with some provisions that we just think weren’t fully cooked yet. We wanted to work more with the department on some language that made sense for both of us. But even though we didn’t get that veto, we’ll be working on in the fall with the Department. And again, I would refer people to the Legal with Leah podcast. I like to think I do my job okay. She does it a heck of a lot better. So refer to her for any further information.

Ty Higgins [00:05:38] We all have our strengths. The elephant in the room, it seemed, was property taxes. Where do we shake out there?

Evan Callicoat [00:05:44] So the governor actually did veto most of the property tax revisions that the Legislature decided to put in, and he cited a lot of the things that he has heard from public schools and local governments about some of the abruptness of these changes. And while we did not take a position on any of those specific provisions as they didn’t necessarily relate directly to CAUV, we are interested to see what is going to happen as we move forward in light of those vetoes. The governor did signal that he’d like to start a working group composed of legislators, agency officials, and many other interested parties. So I think we’ll still be talking about property taxes definitely when the legislature comes back from summer recess.

Ty Higgins [00:06:25] Always talking about property taxes, always talking about eminent domain, this budget no different.

Evan Callicoat [00:06:31] We unfortunately saw a provision that we’ve been supporting for the last couple of GAs get vetoed. That provision would have prohibited recreational trails from being considered public use for purposes of eminent domain. This has been one of those provisions in eminent domain reform, like I said, that we have been pursuing for several general assemblies now. And we look forward to continue to fighting for more landowner protections under Ohio law.

Ty Higgins [00:06:53] Easily more wins than losses for Ohio Farm Bureau and Ohio agriculture in this budget. And it should be noted too, this is the last budget of the DeWine administration and something that you have been a part of now for many, many years in this process of seeing this from start to finish.

Evan Callicoat [00:07:10] Yeah, and we are very grateful, very grateful for the support that Governor DeWine has shown to Ohio agriculture over his term. We’re sad to see him go in his final budget, but again, thank him for all his work and the General Assembly’s work in getting this budget across the line. No matter how we tally everything, this budget is still a win for Ohio agriculture.

Online extra

Legal with Leah: Changes to Ohio pesticide licensing