Agriculture Commissioner

Makes Hurricane Helene recovery a signature accomplishment — he pressed Congress for aid and stood up the Georgia Hurricane Helene Block Grant, a roughly $531 million relief program covering timber, poultry, cattle, pecans, blueberries and more, with applications opening in March 2026.

Runs on his identity as a working farmer and former legislator, touting wins for producers and casting himself as a fighter for Georgia agriculture in Washington and at the Capitol.

Promotes Georgia-grown products and farm-to-market programs as economic development, framing local food largely through growing the state's agriculture economy rather than as a food-access equity agenda.

Restored the Department of Agriculture's status as a certified law-enforcement agency and emphasizes inspection and consumer-protection enforcement as core to the office's mission.

Leans on the Department's weights-and-measures and fuel-quality enforcement — gas-pump accuracy, scales, and product labeling — as a routine consumer-protection function he highlights.

A primary sponsor of Georgia's 2019 Hemp Farming Act as a senator, he now backs “commonsense” guardrails on consumable hemp — banning sales to anyone under 21, requiring lab testing, and mandating accurate labeling to reflect contents.

Established the Georgia Farmland Conservation Fund to help keep working farms intact and worked on water rights and private-property rights as a legislator — pitching conservation as protecting agriculture's land and water base.

Has made it a centerpiece to bar “adversarial foreign nations” like China from buying Georgia farmland, casting it as protecting the food supply and national security — and pairing it with his America First agriculture-council role.