People often do stupid things when they are angry, and several formerly red states did really dumb stuff on Tuesday. However, my home state of Georgia might take first place in the cutting off your nose to spite your face department. We not only promoted the highly incompetent former Atlanta mayor and Joe Biden staffer, Keisha Lance Bottoms, to governor, but we also elected a woman who had a garden and taught a few others how to garden as our Commissioner of Agriculture.
Her name is Katherine Juhan-Arnold. On her campaign website, she bills herself as a "Farmer. Founder. Systems professional."
Through Baby Katie's Pharm & Kitchen, Katherine has worked in community agriculture, seed and seedling access, local food production, farm-to-school initiatives, growing education, and farmers markets.
I searched Baby Katie's Pharm and Kitchen website. I found several ambitious projects that would gladly take a donation from me, but zero proof of any progress against the stated goals. In 2025, I could have purchased a farm box, but there was no guarantee anything would be in it. Weather happens, you know. And whatever agriculture business she was running, it does not appear to have been profitable. The website solicits volunteers and donations to pay employees and keep operations running, even though she was charging $8.50 for 12 oz. of what looks like juice.
In reality, her "farm" went dark in 2026 and no longer appears to be a going concern. And even when it was operating, according to the Facebook page, Baby Katie's Pharm and Kitchen seemed limited to a small rotation of local farmers' markets, selling cold-pressed juices, elderberry syrups, seeds, and starter seedlings rather than full-scale commercial food crops.
Juhan-Arnold's campaign literature mentions a project, Pharm School. So I looked at that website. She is waiting on grant funding to charge about $450 per course for topics such as government contracting, land acquisition, and advanced procurement and distribution strategies. Still, I can't find any record of her actually doing any of those things professionally.
Instead, her LinkedIn profile says she spent about 15 years in tech infrastructure, tech drafting, and data management. Her roles include entry- to mid-level support, drafting, and contract coordination roles. Not exactly the "professional experience in construction management, infrastructure systems, BIM (Building Information Modeling), document control, compliance coordination, and large-scale project organization" her campaign advertised.
Hysterically, Juhan-Arnold's most recent role was as a BIM and Document Control Site Lead for Rohadfox Corporation, where she was contracted out to Google Data Center Services. Even funnier, since Governor-Elect Bottoms' proposed agenda includes pausing all data center construction, effectively taking Georgia out of the tech future.
On the campaign trail and in official Democrat media, Juhan-Arnold said she possessed "15 years of experience managing billion-dollar budgets and infrastructures." She actually managed document control for a company with billion-dollar budgets. Not the budget.
In her candidate disclosure, she lists herself as President of Katie's Pharm & Kitchen beginning in 2014. The nonprofit wasn't formed until 2017. The first three years, she was president of her backyard garden with no revenue stream. Based on what I can find, her hands-on experience consists of three years on land she leased with grant money, which ended in 2020. The farm boxes were offered through some type of cooperative using land she did not own.
According to the Georgia Farm Bureau, agriculture is a $91.5 billion industry in the state. Agriculture, forestry, and related fields provide more than 381,200 jobs. In 2022, the state had 42,439 farms totaling 9,953,730 acres. The average farm size was 235 acres. Not two. 235.
Georgia is the nation's largest producer of peanuts, broilers (chickens), pecans, blueberries, and spring onions. It is also a top producer of cotton, watermelon, eggs, cucumbers, sweet corn, bell peppers, tomatoes, cantaloupes, rye, and cabbage. Peaches are not on the list. Don't ask.
By contrast, outgoing commissioner Tyler Harper is a seventh-generation Georgia farmer who runs a 125-acre row crop, beef cattle, and timber operation. He was a state senator from 2013 to 2023 and sponsored or co-sponsored dozens of bills designed to support agriculture and farm families that eventually became law. He eventually served as chairman of the Natural Resources and the Environment Committee.
It appears Commissioner Juhan-Arnold may have limited time to prove herself competent. One rural Georgia Community group is already mentioning an official recall based on her comparatively thin qualifications. A rancher pointed out that the Georgia Department of Agriculture, which Baby Katie will lead, touches livestock health, food safety, animal feed, pesticides, fuel, weights and measures, agricultural markets, consumer protection, and the economic health of one of Georgia’s most important industries. Juhan-Arnold has experience at farmers' markets, not agricultural markets.
Sending a message with your vote is one thing, my fellow Georgians. You decided we need an incompetent mayor who let Atlanta burn during 2020 and made going inside the perimeter something to avoid. It appears you also gave us a backyard gardener with an inflated sense of her own capabilities and a talent for getting government grants to run one of the state's largest industries.
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