Republican state Sen. Tyler Harper will be Georgia’s next agriculture commissioner, with the Associated Press calling the race just before 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
In a statement, Harper praised his supporters and volunteers and promised to bring the same work ethic and vision from his campaign to the role of agriculture commissioner.
“I am extremely honored and humbled to have won our election to be Georgia’s next Commissioner of Agriculture,” he said.
His Democratic opponent, Nakita Hemingway, trailed by about 8 percentage points, but said earlier in the day that she was not yet ready to concede the race until Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had certified the results.
“I was raised to never give up,” she said.
Libertarian David Raudabaugh was a distant third.
Harper, a seventh-generation farmer from Ocilla, has represented South Georgia since 2013 in the state Senate. As part of the General Assembly, he served as chairman of the Natural Resources and Environment Committee and vice chairman of the Public Safety Committee.
Over the course of the campaign, Harper had said his legislative experience and farming know-how gave him the experience needed to guide Georgia’s $74 billion agribusiness sector, which remains one of the largest sectors of the state’s economy.
Hemingway has worked in real estate, but also has farming roots. She runs a cut flower farm and business in Dacula and her family grew rice for decades on a farm along the Savannah River. The agriculture commissioner’s race marked Hemingway’s second run for an elected office: In 2020, she ran for a state House district in Gwinnett County and narrowly lost.
Harper appeared poised to become just the third new leader the Department of Agriculture has seen in over half a century.
Since 1969, the agency has been led by only two men: Democrat Tommy Irvin, who served as commissioner for more than 40 years, and his successor, Republican Gary Black, who will step aside after finishing his third term as agriculture commissioner. Black’s unsuccessful run for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat earlier this year opened the door for new leadership.
The Department of Agriculture is tasked with ensuring food safety; monitoring animal diseases; marketing Georgia’s fruit, vegetables and protein to the global market; and even regulating gasoline quality.
The new commissioner will also have to help Georgia farmers weather an increasing number of challenges triggered by events at home and abroad.
Rising fertilizer and fuel costs spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have cut many farmers’ already razor-thin profits. Climate change is disrupting the delicate balance of warm and cold temperatures that some of the state’s most valuable crops rely on. Meanwhile, Georgia has lost roughly 7,000 farms since the late ‘90s and its farmers are aging out of the business.
The incoming commissioner will also enter the ongoing clash over the use of soil amendments, a class of fertilizer alternatives that can contain of a range of materials, including wood pulp, chicken processing scraps and even sewage sludge.
Farmers say soil amendments are a cheap and safe alternative to traditional chemical fertilizers. But opponents have raised concerns about the safety of some products.
A soil amendment spill in June on a farm between Athens and Augusta killed an estimated 1,700 fish. The Department of Agriculture is currently weighing new regulations on soil amendment use, but it is unclear when those will be finalized.
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