Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240107
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The question for state government, said Tech's Wayne Purcell, is whether it acts to help tobacco and dairy producers find other sources of income or waits and tries to "clean up the mess" after financial disaster strikes.
Purcell spoke at a session sponsored by the Virginia Farm Bureau's Women's Committee at the Sheraton Inn Roanoke Airport. He talked about the importance of agriculture to Virginia's economy as part of Agriculture Week. The Farm Bureau is Virginia's largest farmers' organization.
While mechanization has helped bring down farm employment, farming and other segments of agriculture - farm suppliers, food processors and distributors - account for 12 percent of Virginia's gross domestic product and 15 percent of the state's total employment, Purcell said.
The outlook comes from work by researchers at Tech who spent two years looking at the contribution of agriculture to Virginia's economy. Their results were reviewed by economists at the University of Virginia to guard against any charges of bias related to Tech's agricultural ties, Purcell said. The study did not examine contributions by the state's forestry, fisheries, and wildlife industries, which would have made agriculture's contribution even higher, he said.
Southwest Virginia is the state's top beef cattle region and is second in dairy production. The region, which for the purpose of the study includes all counties west of Roanoke, also is the second-highest tobacco producing region close behind the southern Virginia counties along the North Carolina border. Fifty percent of all farm sales in Washington County, for instance, are tobacco sales, Purcell said.
With health-related attacks on tobacco unlikely to cease, there's no effective replacement for tobacco as a cash crop on the farms of Southwest and southern Virginia, Purcell said. The best alternative crops would provide less in gross income than tobacco now generates in profits, he said.
Sales of southern Virginia's flue-cured tobacco were $141 million in 1992; sales of burley tobacco, grown in Southwest Virginia, were $44.3 million.
Purcell said the General Assembly formed a joint committee in 1994 to study the plight of the state's tobacco farmers. The question is whether lawmakers will want to get out in front of the problems and deal with them, he said.
In the future, more members of tobacco farm families will have to work off the farm, Purcell said. That means the state needs to have good employment opportunities available in rural communities and to provide farmers with education and training in new skills, he said.
The threat to Virginia dairy farmers comes from economics rather than health concerns.
Dairy farmers in the American Southwest can produce milk for $9 to $10 per hundred pounds, but Virginia farmers must have at least $12 per hundredweight to make a profit. If the complicated federal system of milk price supports is abandoned for a free market for dairy products, Virginians will need to be concerned about their dairy industry, Purcell said.
by CNB