Just staying in business a hot topic at Agriculture Awareness Dinner in Washington County

ABINGDON, Va. – They’re concerned about environmental regulations, rising costs, animal rights activists, low milk prices and declining demand for tobacco.

The nation is dependent on them for food, but these days farmers worry about just staying in business.

That was a big part of the message Monday at the Agriculture Awareness Dinner, held at the Southwest Virginia 4-H Center to give Washington County’s elected officials an overview of the county’s No. 1 industry.

“If you look at Washington County, agriculture really is the foundation of the county,” said Washington Extension Agent Phil Blevins.

John Brickey, a loan officer with Farm Credit, said the industry is “more than just tobacco and cattle and milk. It’s money, folks. Bottom line, it’s money.”

According to the numbers, agriculture in Washington County represents about $60 million in annual sales and nearly $100 million in economic impact each year in the county, Brickey said.

The largest sector of the county’s agriculture economy is beef cattle, said Blevins. Also produced here are milk, eggs, sheep, goats, horses and tobacco. Each sector has unique concerns, but farmers in all areas say they’re feeling a lot of pressure these days from a lot of directions.

Beef

For Adam Wilson, who raises cattle in Widener’s Valley, the shift to twice-yearly property tax collection is a significant issue. He’d like to see an option for farmers to pay taxes as they have traditionally: in December, when they have the cash.

“A lot of these beef producers, their ‘crop’ comes off in the fall,” Wilson said. “Right now, in the spring, it’s a cash-poor time of the year.”

With the county’s new policy, half of the tax is due in May and the other half in November.

Also on the subject of taxes, Wilson said the county’s reduced tax rate for agricultural land is critical for farmers to stay in business. If not for the land use tax, he said, he wouldn’t be able to farm.

Blevins said beef cattle are the largest agricultural sector and the livestock markets in Abingdon are among the largest in the East.

Dairy

Rena Johnson, who works with her father on her family’s farm in eastern Washington County, said dairies are struggling for a number of reasons.

It’s a tough, time-intensive job, she said, and cows never go on vacation.

These days, she said, it’s a struggle to find workers. Many who seek jobs are illegal immigrants who can’t speak English, she said.

“We’ll run into a lot of situations where they’ll come to work for a day and start laying out and we’ll have to let them go, and we’ll receive a notice that now they’re on unemployment,” she said.

A large number of today’s young people haven’t seen a cow and seem distracted by their iPods, she said. There needs to be more incentive for kids to come back to the farm.

It doesn’t help, she said, that milk prices have stayed the same for 30 years while the prices of fuel, feed, corn and fertilizer have all gone through the roof, leaving dairy farmers with aging facilities and struggling just to break even.

Still, she said, “Most farmers would tell you the same thing – we’re proud of what we do, it’s a family tradition. ... I love getting to do the same thing that my dad has done and my granddaddy has done, and we’re proud to feed America and we’re proud to feed the world.”

Other Livestock

Brad Copenhaver, who was raised on his family’s farm in Meadowview, points out an important fact about Washington County: “We have more cows in this county than we have people,” he said.

But with less than 2 percent of the American population farming, he said most of society has become too far removed from the source of food.

Copenhaver, a student in agriculture at Virginia Tech, said proposed federal environmental regulations could put farmers out of business, expanding federal authority to the point that inspectors could visit local farms and demand expensive environmental measures and threaten fines.

“A lot of these people have no experience in agriculture,” he said. “They don’t know what kind of challenges farmers face.”

Tobacco

Bear Lloyd is a recent high school graduate, but he’s still old enough to remember when Abingdon was “the tobacco capital, pretty much, of the world.”

While production has declined substantially since the 2005 buyout of the federal tobacco quota program, the crop is still a significant industry. Washington County, Lloyd said, is today the third-largest burley tobacco-producing county in the state.

Still, tobacco growers are faced with declining demand in the United States, he said, due in large part to anti-smoking laws and high cigarette taxes. But, he said, new markets are opening up in medicinal uses for tobacco, while demand is growing in Asia.

He said he’d like to see the buying and selling of tobacco return to Washington County so he and other tobacco farmers don’t have to travel to Tennessee or Kentucky to sell their crop and the county can recoup revenue that’s now going out of state.

Two county constitutional officers were there Monday night, as were members of the county Board of Supervisors, the Planning Commission and officials from the towns of Abingdon and Glade Spring.

Dulcie Mumpower, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, said officials should be concerned about the issues facing farmers.

“I can remember the wise words of my dear dad 30 years ago,” she said. “He said one day the American people will go hungry because they have not taken into consideration the farmers and the farmland, and I think we’re closer to that point and people are just not taking the situation seriously, and it is a serious situation.”

Blevins said his biggest fear is that the nation’s agriculture system will crumble – and will have to be recreated in order for the United States to feed itself again.

“Nobody’s worried about it yet,” said Wilson, the cattle farmer. “Everybody’s worried about oil and us being dependent on foreign oil, but where are we going to be when we’re dependent on foreign food?”

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