Two "wins" this summer 2020 yields good news for Georgia sod producers

Two "wins" this summer

2020 yields good news for Georgia sod producers

Many of our sod producer members contacted legislators to explain how eliminating the exemptions would make Georgia growers vulnerable to surrounding states, who have the same exemption.

An effort by Georgia legislators to remove the sales exemption

for sod sold on the farm in Georgia was thwarted by the advocacy of the Georgia Urban Ag Council (UAC) and our members earlier this summer. Legislators were looking for money to mitigate massive spending cuts due to COVID-19, and saw this exemption, among others, as lowhanging fruit.

House Speaker David Ralston, among others, voiced opposition to eliminating these exemptions, maintaining that businesses would cut more jobs without them. Many of our sod producer members contacted legislators to explain how eliminating the exemptions would make Georgia growers vulnerable to surrounding states, who have the same exemption.

We will watch this closely in coming months, in the case the conversation comes up again among our legislators.

This good news for Georgia Sod Producers was followed in August by a ruling by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published in the federal register that they have determined sod to be agriculture and as such U.S sod haulers can claim important Hours of Service (HOS) exemptions as part 49 CFR 395.1(k)(1), commonly referred to as the 150 airmile radius rule. This ruling comes on the heels of two years of collaboration between the FMCSA and Turfgrass Producers International (TPI) which began in 2018 after several TPI members reported that they were experiencing confusion among local law enforcement officials as to which crops can or cannot claim important agricultural commodity exemptions. Much of this began when a new mandate on Electronic Logging Devices and Hours of Service Supporting Documents was published in the federal register in 2015 under Docket No. FMCSA-2010-0167.

The official announcement can be found in the U.S. Federal Register here:

www.turfgrasssod.org/the-u-s-dot-deemssod-to-be-agriculture-for-hours-of-serviceregulations

Note that the ruling may seem confusing, as it states that the action by FMCSA is denial of application for exemption (from TPI) as moot. The reason for this is that FMCSA analyzed the application, public comments, and applicable law and they determined that turfgrass sod is an agricultural commodity already subject to the HOS exemption, so the exemption was unnecessary, therefore moot. TPI’s application clearly laid out the groundwork for FMCSA to include turfgrass sod in the definition of agriculture commodity.

Many thanks and congratulations to TPI Executive Director Casey Reynolds for diligently pursuing this ruling, and thank you to our members who weighed in on this with the FMCSA!

Thank you to our members for their support and specifically the sod producers who are members of UAC.