ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 TAG: 9512130073
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
The Halifax County tobacco farmer's challenge to the Roanoke cancer doctor at the Hotel Roanoke Tuesday night and the doctor's reply touched only part of a complicated problem facing Virginia's tobacco-growing communities.
That problem is what to do about the diminishing role that tobacco will play in their local economies because of both health concerns in this country about tobacco's use and growing competition abroad for U.S. tobacco growers. China, for instance, now produces 50 percent of the world's tobacco compared with this country's 10 percent.
Wayne Purcell, an agriculture economist who directs the Rural Economic Analysis Program at Virginia Tech, said part of the answer is for local people and state government to get out in front of the problem and plan to deal with the changes that are coming. The alternative, he said, is to clean up the mess later, which will cost more and be less helpful to the people who are hurt.
Purcell has helped develop a set of recommendations for dealing with changes facing Southside and Southwest Virginia tobacco growing communities that were unveiled before tobacco growers and others Tuesday night and will be presented to a General Assembly subcommittee at the hotel this morning.
The recommendations focus on both helping farmers do a better job of growing tobacco and helping them become less dependent on tobacco. They were developed by the Tobacco Communities Project, funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and coordinated by the University of Virginia Department of Family Medicine.
Specifically, the recommendations call for:
Development of technology for tobacco production for families who wish to continue growing the crop.
Finding strategies for farmers and communities to lessen their dependence on tobacco.
Developing access to financing in rural communities for alternative enterprises both on and off the farm.
Making sure that off-farm jobs and job training are available in tobacco communities.
But J.T. Davis, a Halifax county tobacco producer and a representative of the Virginia Tobacco Growers Association, would have none of the notion that tobacco farmers ought to find something else to do for a living. Calling the tobacco farmer the "White Knight of Virginia Agriculture," Davis said the public needs to be educated on the crop's contribution to the state's economy.
Davis asked Dr. Marvin Lougheed of Roanoke, who identified himself as a cancer specialist, how he would like it if someone told him that he had to give up his professional job and find another low-paying job. Lougheed had earlier talked about the health effects of smoking.
"I would go," Lougheed responded, "and become a gardener working for $4 an hour if I never had to treat a cancer patient again." He calculated later, using Davis' employment figures, that one person was dying in the state each year from a tobacco-related illness for each five people working in the tobacco business.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB