Tennessee Commissioner of Agriculture Ken Givens and Senator Mae Beavers visited Macon County last week to participate in the presentation of a state of the art "fireplow" to county's state Forestry Division.

The upgrade of the state's most effective wildland firefighting weapon will be used for the protection of Macon and surrounding counties. It was among 112 bulldozers and transport units being deployed across the state to 74 counties to replace aging equipment currently in use by the Tennessee Department of Agricultural Division of Forestry.

While in the area Commissioner Givens and Senator Beavers took the opportunity to discuss other concerns such as TennCare, the tobacco buyout program and meth addition.

Commissioner Givens stated, "The current Tenn Care plan is the the best that can be expected. With the run away cost of prescriptions, the only way the Governor could preserve the program was to make the decision to hang on to the most important parts of the program." Givens dubbed the softened program "TennCare Lite". He stated this allowed 97,000 people to keep all their coverage, about 1/3 of the enrollees. "These are the people who need health care." Givens said. "To continue the program without the cuts $650 million is needed, the funds are just not available to put into the Tenn Care program. The governor has allotted funds to fully fund a pre-K program and a BEP program which would not be funded if all our money goes to try to save TennCare."

"Meth is also a big problem in rural areas," Givens continued. "Governor Bredesen has appointed a task force to deal with the meth problem in a comprehensive manner. This includes putting restrictions on cold medicines and other drugs used in the production of meth, funding beds at residential treatment centers and promoting public awareness with drug prevention programs in schools. Drug bust was 39% less in 2005 than in 2004, we hope to take Tennessee from ranking second in drug use to a much higher number."

The Commissioner and Senator concluded their visit discussing Farm Revitalization. Tobacco production is down 20%-30% or about 7,000 acres in Tennessee. "The number one reason for this is reduced price to producers. The Governor has proposed two multi million dollar programs in ag revitalization with three components.

These are:

Livestock-beef production, which will improve genetics and put in place a national animal identification system to identify problems and restore public confidence in beef markets.

Bio Based fuels which will soon be available at most farm co-ops.

Fully restore soil and conservation money including a $10 million land acquisition fund to preserve wilderness areas, forest lands and state parks for wildlife management.

Commissioner Givens was named TN Commissioner of Agriculture in 2002 by Governor Bredsen. He is a former state representative and farmer. He has been instrumental in passing key legislation related to agriculture.

Senator Beavers represents the 17th District encompassing

Cannon, Clay, DeKalb, Macon, Smith, Sumner (partial), Trousdale, and Wilson counties in middle Tennessee.