Virginia BAs, please advocate for SB 430, the Farm Brewery bill

Check it out for yourself, obviously; it may not be your cup of tea. But generally it provides for a farm brewery license similar to the existing farm winery license, for up to 15,000 bbls annually, requiring the use of hops or grains or fruit grown on the farm (or by other VA farmers). It won't do anything for existing brewers I guess but it will facilitate the maintenance of agricultural land in agriculture, and it will boost VA's nascent hops and malting-quality barley industries. (IMO)

SB 430 passed the Senate 1/30, on 3d reading, (by a vote of 35-3) and now goes over to the House, so it is your House delegate who needs to be contacted. I am not too up on procedure but I believe it will go to the House next week, 2/11, on "crossover day" and be assigned to committee then. It has to first be passed out of committee and then passed by the full House, I think; I don't know if there are 3 "readings" like in the Senate, or not. I'm betting there is a VA BA who knows! (I'm in CO but with family connections in VA)

Here's a link to the bill: http://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB430/2014

 

Update: Yesterday the bill was assigned to the House committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources. This was a week before the "crossover" date, when all passed Senate Bills are assigned to House Committees, and vice versa. I don't know if this is indicative of a positive sentiment towards the bill or not (that it got assigned early), but in any event here is the (fairly large) entire committee membership followed by the (smaller) Agriculture Subcommittee membership.

Again, please contact your Delegate, if he/she is on either list (assuming you think as I do that farm breweries are good for Virginia, both in terms of promoting craft beer and in terms of promoting sustainable and profitable agricultural endeavors, i.e. hops and barley and fruit cultivation, much of which can be and historically has been done on smaller, family-type farms):

Agriculture, Chesapeake & Natural Resources: (asterisk and bold denotes membership in "Agriculture" subcommittee where this will probably be assigned):

Scott Chair)
Ware
Wright
Orrock*
Marshall, D.W. * (Chair of Agriculture subcommittee)
Poindexter*
Pogge
Knight*
Edmunds
Wilt
Morefield*
Webert
Ransone
Fariss
Miller*
Plum
Bulova
Sickles*
James*
Torian
Keam

I'll post phone numbers, emails, and district geographical description when I have a bit more time