ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601150001
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: LESLIE HAGER-SMITH SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Each day now, Joe Hunnings, Montgomery County's former agricultural extension agent, commutes from Blacksburg to his new office in Abingdon.
The recently appointed director for the Southwest District of Virginia Cooperative Extension, Hunnings oversees extension activities in 18 counties, from the New River Valley west to the Cumberland Gap.
His promotion, on the heels of the retirement of Lelia Mayton, a family and consumer science agent, leaves Montgomery County with only one full-time extension agent instead of the traditional three. The vacancies won't be filled until at least July 1, if at all, Hunnings said.
Hunnings' job is to orchestrate reorganization of the Extension Service in the Southwest District, returning the agency's emphasis to agriculture. His duties include streamlining the service's administration and reallocating money for information technology.
Under the reorganization, agents no longer will work in a single county, but will cover as many as a half-dozen counties.
The agents will be specialists, Hunnings said. For example, one multicounty area may now be served by a plant specialist, dairy scientist and an animal scientist working as a team.
Under the old model, each county had individual agents overseeing broad areas such as agriculture, family consumer science (formerly home economics), and 4-H. The agriculture agent would handle everything from skunks in the basement to rotational grazing for beef and dairy herds.
"What we'll be saying to counties is that we will be able to provide equal or better extension service for essentially the same dollars," Hunnings said.
In the four counties of the New River Valley, Hunnings plans to offer the services of three traditional agriculture agents who have expertise in crop and livestock production, three home economists and a 4-H agent.
The New River Valley will also share with the district's other 14 counties the time of three farm management agents who can help farmers with accounting, tax and other business questions.
The changes will mean more travel and more demands on the time of extension agents.
Agents are hoping new technology will allow them to be more efficient.
Virginia Cooperative Extension is one of the few state agencies in which all members are connected to the Internet; staff members routinely communicate by e-mail.
Andy Swiger, dean of Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, which oversees extension, sees the future like this: "Maybe instead of an agent leaning across a fence and explaining things for half an hour on your own property, you may be receiving information by Internet or phone."
Cooperative Extension will reallocate funds in its budget to purchase equipment, train agents, train farmers, and make the shift to "a computerized, network-type operation," Swiger said.
Since 1989, Virginia Cooperative Extension has lost 20 percent of its state funding and 150 agents, as well as additional specialists, representing a 40 percent loss of staff. "If we didn't have all these budget cuts, I'd like to think that we would have been moving to this kind of system anyway," Hunnings said recently.
"The idea is to move to a system that provides the most effective and efficient service with the resources that we have left."
In Southwest Virginia, 17 counties with two directors have been reshaped into an 18-county district with one director. "It's what I call a very, very flat administration, with very few administrative roles, particularly here on campus," said Swiger.
In Montgomery County, the staff cuts mean that Joyce Martin, the county's remaining agent, will continue as the county's 4-H agent and also serve as acting unit director. Hunnings hopes to name a new agriculture agent by this summer, but probably will arrange for the county to share a home economist with another county.
Hunnings said he'll miss his office in Christiansburg and working with local people. He hopes to continue creating innovative programs like those he started as an agent in Montgomery County.
"When I came here [Montgomery County], one of the major needs identified by local citizens was waste management," Hunnings recalled. Many groups had undertaken recycling efforts, but none was working on yard waste and composting. "In extension you have to see where ... you can make the biggest impact."
He started a "Don't Bag It - Use It" program to educate homeowners about the beneficial uses of grass clippings and other yard wastes.
He also undertook a well-water testing program that heightened awareness about water quality and provided the county government with data on where problems exist.
Last year his office undertook a pesticide disposal project that saved 36 farmers some $19,000 in disposal costs for pesticides they no longer needed and had no effective way to get rid of.
"People see Joe Hunnings in the newspaper and they read 'Hoein' and Growin' [a weekly column in the Current] and they think 'home horticulture' but that has really been the smaller part of what I've been involved in," said Hunnings, who was an extension agent in Warren County before moving to Blacksburg in 1991.
"Most of my work has been in water quality, sustainable forage management systems, livestock production - lots of things that are related to the mainstream agricultural community."
There are still 500-some farms in the county that need this sort of help, he said. FARMING FACTS ABOUT MONTGOMERY COUNTY
Market value of the county's agricultural products: $15.2 million
Number of farms in county: 537
Average size of farm : 184 acres
Percent of county's total land in farms: 39 percent
Active farmers, both part time and full time: 350-400
Number of milk cows: Ranks 10th out of state's 95 counties
Number of sheep and lambs: Ranks 11th out of 95 counties
Number of cattle: Ranks 23rd out of 95 counties
"Agriculture is still a large player in Montgomery County, compared to other counties in the state," said Joe Hunnings, director for the Southwest District of Virginia Cooperative Extension.
SOURCE: Virginia Cooperative Extension facts pulled from 1992 state statistics and federal census information.
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff Joe Hunnings recently was promoted toby CNBdirector of the Southwest District of Virginia Cooperative
Extension: "What we'll be saying to counties is that we will be
able to provide equal or better extension service for essentially
the same dollars." color