Ga Market Bulletin

Black tells Kiwanians: 'My office is the state of Georgia'

By Marianne Thomasson

The Times-Herald

"If the Lord tarries, we will have a lot more people to feed," said Gary Black, Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture.

Black spoke to the Newnan Kiwanis Club at its weekly luncheon June 28 at the Newnan Country Club. He was elected to the job last year after Tommy Irvin's longtime service.

"Everybody asks me, 'What did you find?' We found 40 phone lines. A total of 26 were pulled into the building for the Olympics but were never used.

"If a project costs over $5,000, it has to be bid out. We found a lot of checks for $4,995. The bid for landscaping the Atlanta State Farmers Market was $30,000, but we're going to do it for $10,900," Black continued.

"We want to put a public face back on this department. I have a desk in Atlanta. I can't help that. They make me have it. My office is the state of Georgia."

Black started putting a management team together eight weeks ago. "There are 43 on the steering committee. Five of them are just good Georgians who have nothing to do with agriculture. They're not regulated by us and are not even familiar with the discipline I've assigned them to do. Their charge is to ask 'Why?' at every corner. It's a simple approach to management: If we can't justify something to a few people, how do we justify it to 10,000 million Georgians?"

He said the team is supposed to identify "what we do well, what we need to improve and what can we stop doing."

The report from the management team should be ready in August.

Black also complained about the technological state of the Agriculture Department.

"We've got to get the department into the 21st century in this Internet age. Say you're a farm supplier and need seven different licenses. Until we can get this aircraft carrier turned, you'll have seven different checks going to seven different cubicles and you'll be mailed seven different licenses.

"Technology advances are coming. We hope to have agr.georgia.gov ready to launch soon. It will be a new and improved portal to the Department of Agriculture. We found a couple of good kids stuffed away in a back office. They found all the software online. We challenged them, led them and held them accountable for doing their job," Black continued.

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Consumer Q's » Features » The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator. Answer: June is the main daylily month in Georgia. To extend the daylily blooming season consider adding early, late and re-blooming varieties to your garden. A few early varieties are `Gold Dust,’ ‘Orangeman’ and `Early Flora.’ A few later varieties are ‘Challenger,’  ‘August Flame’ and ‘Autumn Minaret.’ Two popular re-blooming varieties are ‘Stella de Oro’ and ‘Black-eyed Stella.’  Re-blooming varieties will bloom over several months. Visit the website of the American Hemerocallis (daylily) Society (www.daylilies.org) for more information and to find local daylily societies and some sources for buying daylilies. Also check the Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin for sources. With proper selections, you can have daylilies in bloom from April to late summer or fall. A: It is a good idea to buy frozen items like ice cream and sherbet last to prevent them from melting. It is also a good idea to buy raw meat and poultry near the end of your grocery store visit as well, especially if you are doing a lot of shopping. This will help keep the products cold, decreasing the chances for bacteria to grow and lengthening product shelf life. It also lessens the chances of cross-contamination — which can happen when raw meat or poultry juices drip on other food. Separate raw meat and poultry from other food in your shopping cart and make sure they are put into separate bags at the checkout. Drive directly home from the grocery store and immediately put cold food into the refrigerator or freezer. If you have questions about services or products regulated by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, visit our website at www.agr.georgia.gov or write us at 19 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Room 227, Atlanta, GA  30334 or e-mail us at info@agr.georgia.gov.

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