By James Ronald Skains
Journal Correspondent

• Baton Rouge

"Some of the opposition to our Ethanol Bill just passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor tried to characterize our efforts as 'Big Oil' versus 'Big Bob' but it was all about what was best for the people of Louisiana," Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry Bob Odom told the Piney Woods Journal.

"We have to find ways to cut the cost of our fuel bills and if the farmers get a little slice of the pie, that's so much the better."\par }{\plain "Using ethanol in other states has worked fine, so why will it not work in Louisiana?" the forty-plus year employee of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry questioned. "The problem is very simple. The oil companies, big or little, don't like mandates that set guidelines for them."

Over 40 years ago, a young Bob Odom, with a fresh degree in Agriculture from Southeastern College in Hammond went to work as Herbicide Inspector for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture making $400 per month.

"That was not bad money for a young guy that grew up near Haynesville in North Louisiana," Commissioner Odom explained. "When I first started with the Department, Dave Pearce was Commissioner. Later, Gil Dozier was elected Commissioner and I served under him until he fired me."

"He told me to go out and raise him some campaign money which I did," Odom recalled. "After I raised $50,000 for him, he fired me and told me that if I could raise that kind of money that I was a threat to him. So, the next election I ran myself and thanks to my many friends around the state, I've been here ever since."

Odom, with his years of service in the Marine Corp and his time in the East Baton Rouge School System, after he was fired by Gil Dozier, add up to some forty seven years of public service.

"I could go to the house, get my retirement check each month and make the same amount of money as I do coming into the office," Odom noted. "But my plans are to definitely run next year for re-election. We are making progress in our struggle to make things better for our agricultural interests. I want to see Louisiana with a big soy bean crushing operation and I also want to see sugar cane being used to make ethanol while I'm still in office."

"If we can get our ethanol plants into production using sugar cane, we will need a lot more acres of cane each year," said Commissioner Odom, who has served as Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry under five different Governors. "I don't anticipate us using corn as a feed stock in making ethanol in Louisiana but mostly sugar cane and sweet potatoes. One of the three plants that I know of will use corn but the others will use different feed-stocks."

"All the new ethanol plants will be built with private money," Commissioner Odom emphasized. "Our involvement as a state agency is to help them here. We do have property that can be leased at the Lacassine site. Our Department's role is more promotional, plus we are putting the plant owners in touch with our farmers."

"I do believe that we can use the bagasse from sugar cane to generate electricity to run our ethanol plants," Odom pointed out. "If we generate more electricity than we use, then we can sell our green power to the utility companies who are mandated by federal regulations to buy electricity made from renewable resources."

The list of people who have occupied the Governors chair during Bob Odom's tenure in office include Edwin Edwards, Dave Treen, Buddy Roemer, Mike Foster and current Governor Kathleen Blanco. When asked by the Journal, which was the easiest administrations to work with, Odom didn't hesitate in reply, "Actually the Treen administration was the one that we worked best with. The reason was quite simple because two friends of mine, John Cade and Billy Nungesser were in positions close to Governor Treen and we were able to convey what we needed more directly to the Governor." During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Commissioner Odom and many of his employees were on the front line of dealing with the aftermath of the storms.

"We had people sleeping in our offices," Debbie Barrilleaux, longtime receptionist for the Commissioner, told the Journal. "Not only did we have people sleeping here but we were also feeding them breakfast each morning. I don't think I went home for the first couple of days. During the first month after the hurricane, a lot of us put in a lot of sixteen hour days.

"Between 250 and 300 of our employees were active in the aftermath of the hurricanes providing fuel, water and food," Commissioner Odom explained. "Our employees set up facilities in the damaged areas that were points of distribution for FEMA. At one point we set up a distribution point for water and those MRE (meals ready to eat) in a Sam's Club parking lot."

"The Department's fueling stations also played a huge role in the days after both Katrina and Rita," Odom pointed out. "We hooked generators on our stations and pumped fuel when no one else had fuel."

"One of the biggest problems that was faced during the hurricanes was the evacuation of pets," Odom who will turn 71 this year noted. "We couldn't get FEMA to understand that a lot of the older folks would not leave their houses unless their pets went with them or were taken care of."

"The storms have devastated a lot of agriculture operations in South Louisiana. We lost over 30,000 head of cattle during the storms," Odom said sadly. "Also, we lost enough timber to the storms to rebuild New Orleans. We asked FEMA to help our forest industry to harvest and stock pile the timber under a water system to preserve for a while for future use. FEMA never even gave us the courtesy of a response to our request."

"All the downed timber in the Florida parishes has already caused us some fire problems," Odom emphasized. "It cost a lot of money to fight forest fires, and each time our people have to go out on a fire, both their safety and that of our equipment is at risk. You never know when a fire is going to get real bad especially in all the drought that we've had."

"We have picked up some pieces of surplus equipment from the U.S. Forest Service as a direct results of the storm," Odom elaborated. "Also, we were able to add another 30 forest firefighters, which we really needed with Forest Service funds."

"To our knowledge, no one in agriculture or the forest industry has been accused of any fraudulent practices as results of the hurricanes and relief efforts," Odom stated emphatically. "Our farmers and forestry people are tough and resilient but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with the devastation caused by the hurricanes."

Commissioner Odom has also been active on a national level with other State Commissioners of Agriculture and has testified many times before Congress on Agriculture matters.

"I was once invited to the White House while President Reagan was in office," Odom recalled. "As I was walking through the White House, I saw Yasser Arafat who was on an official visit to Washington."

To sum up Bob Odom's tenure in office would be to say that he has had his share of detractors. But he has never strayed far from pushing, pulling, and leading the charge for Agricultural, Forestry and consumers statewide to get a fair shake.

His department's weights and measures section and inspection arm for food processing and imports plays a vital role in consumer protection throughout the state. In addition, one section in his department focuses exclusively in helping market Louisiana grown products not only all over the U.S. but worldwide.

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