Figures Holds Town Meeting on Agriculture

August 2, 2026

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, talked with area farmers about the current state of agriculture in Alabama as well as the status of the nation’s Farm Bill at a town hall in Troy on Wednesday.

Figures, who serves on the House Committee on Agriculture and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said as a freshman Congressman, he requested a seat on those committees.

“I recognized very early on in the process what the agriculture industries and what the forestry industries mean to the state,” Figures said. “Agriculture is the number one industry in the state, and probably always will be the number one industry in the state. And that is something that we have to keep top of mind, regardless of who's representing you in Washington, D.C., is the importance of the agricultural industry and the importance of supporting it, of sustaining it, of incentivizing it to where farmers want to pass down the farm to the next generation to keep it going. A nation that does not have a strong agricultural community, a strong agricultural industry, is a nation that is teetering on the edge of failure. You have to have it. You have to be able to feed yourselves. You have to be able to clothe yourselves.”

Figures said in order to effectively represent Alabama’s agricultural interests in Washington, D.C., it was important to understand what farmers in the 2nd Congressional District actually needed. In order to do that, he said, it was important to speak directly with the farmers that were sowing the fields and harvesting the crops.

Figures brought former Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks to a town hall meeting held at South Alabama Electric Cooperative in Troy on Wednesday afternoon.

Sparks served as the state's agriculture and industries commissioner from 2003-2011and as the head of the Alabama Rural Development Agency from 2011 to 2017. Sparks said poultry, cattle and row crops amounted to a $77 billion annual industry in Alabama and it was critical those industries remain strong.

“You know, we can fight over tourism all we want to, but folks, I've always said we don't want to get back allowing foreign countries to feed us like they put gasoline in our automobiles,” Sparks said.

One of the first questions out of the gate at the town meeting was about the rising cost of fuel. Figures attributed the cost of diesel fuel to what he called a self-inflicted wound, the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran and how the conflict is affecting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

“One of the big issues we have right now, and we've been having for some time now, is how much it is costing you to produce things that you can no longer sell at the rates that you need to be able to sell them for either domestically or internationally,” Figures said. “Some of that is market driven, but some of the hurdles that we have right now, some of the significant ones, they are, they have nothing to do with the market factors. They have nothing to do with supply. They have nothing to do with demand. They have nothing to do with environmental factors of a bad year or a drought. It's self-inflicted. And that is, that's the Straight of Hormuz. That is something that we have made a conscious decision to be engaged in as a nation. And it is artificially driving up fuel costs.”

Figures also said about 60 percent of the raw materials needed to make fertilizer also must travel through the Strait of Hormuz. He said interruptions to shipping in the Middle East were also affecting the price of fertilizer as well.

Figures said one of the most disruptive federal policies to farming have been tariffs.

“Nobody voted for [tarrifs], nobody,” Figures said. “[Tariffs] are not good local economics because at the end of the day when farmers here can sell fewer of their products for a lower price that has an impact that they feel in the county commission's budget; that is an impact that they feel in the City of Troy's budget; that is an impact that you feel obviously in your personal wallets.

“So that's one of the reasons that I've supported a number of the things that we've done because I feel that we are in a position now where there are decisions that are being made that are affecting people in Alabama directly in their pockets directly and some of it is government induced and it is self-inflicted.

“I feel this is one of the reasons I voted against the Farm Bill, or what was left of the Farm Bill after they split it up this year was because it did not do enough to compensate for that harm to Alabama farmers. It threw pennies at the farmers who've been taking it on the chin with these raised fuel prices with these raised fertilizer prices with these dried up export markets where they're able to sell less to fewer countries. It didn't do enough for them and that is something that I will never sit by and accept as a member of Congress.”

Figures said there most likely would be no resolution on the Farm Bill until December or later.

Issues: Congress