PILOT MOUNTAIN —Dignitaries and farmers alike came to the Pilot Mountain Pride center yesterday to welcome Sen. Kay Hagan, who was visiting several locations in Surry County Tuesday.

In addition to visiting the Surry Community College viticulture center, Hagan toured the Pilot Mountain Pride section of the Pilot Center, which was filled with huge boxes of locally grown vegetables such as sweet potatoes, broccoli, green peppers, butternut squash, potatoes and pumpkins. Bryan Cave, director of the N.C. Cooperative Extension in Surry County, guided the tour to show Hagan what has been accomplished in the first year of operation at the center, which was designed to provide a way for local farmers to sell their produce to local grocery stores and restaurants.

Hagan was shown the line were the vegetables get washed and are sorted and then was taken to an enormous forced-air cooler that helps lock in the taste of freshly picked vegetables.

“I am extremely impressed. This supports the mission of locally grown support for farmers. To take the marketing off the backs of the farmers, I think is critically important because then the farmer can spend his or her time on the farm growing. And the fact that the community, the county, the city, the state and private enterprises have come together I think speaks volumes for Pilot Mountain and Surry County because they are concerned about the people and they want to be providing the jobs. I think that’s what we in government can do to help create that business climate,” said Hagan.

Hagan is working on a Food Safety bill, that hasn’t been changed since 1936, that is in Congress right now. She and John Tester from Montana co-sponsored an amendment to that bill which she claims will exempt smaller farmers from some of the “burdensome regulations” that apply to tracing food.

“If it’s locally grown then you can trace it,” she said.

Mount Airy farmer Darren Slate showed off his first crop of broccoli to Hagan. This year, Slate grew broccoli, sweet potatoes, peppers, sweet corn and cabbage to sell at the Pride center.

“If you want a better product, a safer product you go back to your family farm. You look at every problem that we’ve had with the mega-farmers and all these problems like salmonella,” said Slate.

Hagan told him that she had introduced legislation to limit the number of regulations that small farmers have to follow. Slate said that type of legislation would definitely help the small farmers cut down on the red tape, citing cost as a factor.

“I see so much in the campaign, so many promises,” said Slate, to which Hagan responded that she is not up for election this year.

“Let’s get back to what we were founded on. We were founded on God first, people second and hard work and determination and that’s all we need. We can make this country great again. I believe that we can be what we were, but we’ve got to get back to what we were founded on,” said Slate. “Whatever it takes to put people back to work, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Hagan said she wanted to come back next year to see how much the Pride center will have grown by then.

Pilot Mountain Mayor Earl Sheppard was happy to see Hagan show an interest in the Pilot Center facility.

“As she said, it’s creating jobs, not only here, but we are training people for jobs and getting new farmers,” said Sheppard.

Charles Boles, manager of Pilot Mountain Pride, said he too, enjoyed Hagan’s visit.

“It was really nice to see her. It was good to know that someone in Washington is paying attention to what farmers are doing and the struggles that farmers have. That part was really nice to see that she really is concerned with North Carolina and Surry County and agriculture,” said Boles.

After touring the Pride center, Hagan was taken to the Surry Community College section of the Pilot Center. She said she was impressed with the work being done to create jobs in that part of the center, which is in line with a bill that she in working on called the America Works Act. If passed, she stated it will create a credential so that when students graduate it will show potential employers that they can do a specific job.

Contact Mondee Tilley at mtilley@mtairynews.com or at 719-1930.