Study urges tax breaks for some poultry industries

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A committee of farmers, government officials and university professors wants the state to create tax incentives for farmers who take environmentally sensitive steps to dispose of poultry waste. The committee was created by the legislature two years ago to study ways to keep the poultry industry profitable while lessening the environmentally harmful products it creates. It plans to release its report today. The report asks the legislature to create or expand tax subsidies that would lower researchers' costs of developing new ways to dispose of chicken waste.

Lawmakers should provide subsidies for transportation and storage of poultry litter, the report says, but the subsidies should not be permanent.

"Permanent subsidies frankly don't make sense, and so some sort of sunset would be necessary," said Floyd Gilzow, the committee chairman who also is executive director of a company that changes chicken waste into fertilizer pellets.

The report also encourages the Legislature to create a new tax credit to push companies to buy equipment and make capital improvements needed to develop beneficial uses for poultry waste. The subsidy is necessary to lower the cost of developing and bringing a product to market, Gilzow said.

"One of the challenges that we face is trying to make poultry litter a viable product," he said. "It's the old chicken-and-egg approach. You can't create a product as long as it has a high-cost associated to transportation."

Gilzow pointed to the state's wood energy tax credit as a program that was created to lower costs and encourage the development of an environmentally friendly way to dispose of wood products. The same logic applies in creating a tax credit for poultry farmers, he said.

Low-cost financing also should be made available to help poultry farmers buy more equipment and implement new techniques that result in environmentally friendly use of poultry litter, he said.

Poultry sales generate about $92 million annually in state and local taxes, 13,000 direct jobs and 20,000 related jobs, according to University of Missouri economist Ron Plain.