Katherine Juhan-Arnold won the job of Georgia commissioner of agriculture on November 3, 2026, 53 percent to 46, on the first campaign she has ever run.
The office decides what gets inspected and what gets sold. Georgia’s is the oldest state department of agriculture in the country, and it reaches food safety inspections, animal health, consumer protection, and the calibration of fuel pumps in all 159 counties. Juhan-Arnold, 37, will represent about 67,000 farmers, nearly 3,000 of them Black. Georgia agriculture puts about $91.4 billion a year into the state economy and supports more than 381,200 jobs, by the count of the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development. The post pays $125,987.
She beat Tyler Harper, 40, the Republican incumbent, who had held the seat since 2023 and served in the state Senate from 2013 to 2022.
Before any of this, Juhan-Arnold founded Baby Katie’s Pharm & Kitchen, a nonprofit that brings fresh food and gardening to low-income communities. She was putting produce into neighborhoods that had none. Now she inspects it.
She is the first woman and the first Black commissioner of agriculture in Georgia’s history. Only 12 states elect the office at all, most of them in the Southeast, and seven of them held agriculture elections this year.
In a statement, she wrote: “Georgia, we did it! I am overwhelmed with gratitude.” Then, in the same breath: “The campaign may be over, but our work is just beginning.”
