
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993                   TAG: 9306270035
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C7   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SALUDA                                LENGTH: Medium

ROADSIDE RESENTMENT GROWING

On land that should produce up to 50 bushels of wheat per acre, Middlesex County farmer H.L. Revere thinks he'll be lucky to get 20, and he and other farmers blame the state highway department.

First, the farmers say, the Department of Transportation planted ryegrass along roadways to prevent erosion and keep Virginia green. Then, the agency cut back on mowing, which allowed the grass and other weeds to invade their fields, suffocating and starving the wheat.

"Offhand, I'd say that 75 percent of the wheat in Middlesex is affected," said Fred S. Crittenden, another farmer who also is a member of the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors.

Earlier this month, the board passed a resolution urging highway officials to cut the grass in right-of-ways more often.

David Moore, the county's agricultural extension agent, said wheat production in some fields might be cut 50 percent, and there are "probably some that you won't be able to get the combine through" to harvest because the wild grass chokes the machinery.

If the grass along the highway was mowed, it would be less of a problem because it wouldn't go to seed and spread, farmers say.

Don Wagner, the highway agency's resident engineer in Saluda, said department policy is to mow only one swath of grass regularly, not the entire right-of-way.

"We're only cutting full-width right-of-way one time a year, and that's October," Wagner said. "The practice came as a budget-cutting effort."

About 4,000 acres of wheat are planted annually in Middlesex. If the crop is cut in half, the loss is about a quarter of a million dollars.

Every year for the past several years, the Virginia Farm Bureau has seen one or more counties pass a resolution complaining about planting and mowing along Virginia roads, said William C. Latane, a field service director for the bureau.

The state has tried several kinds of vegetation to control erosion, Latane said, sometimes to the dismay of adjacent landowners.

"At one point, of course, they were planting" rapidly growing kudzu, he said. "That's not a good idea."

by CNB