Agriculture, forestry holds 500,000 jobs statewide

HOT SPRINGS — Agriculture and forestry has a $79 billion impact on Virginia’s economy, according to a Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service study presented Monday during the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention at The Homestead.

Terry Rephann, a regional economist with the Weldon Cooper Center, said agriculture and forestry’s employment impact is about 501,500 jobs, or 10.3 percent of the state’s employment.

“There are a lot of trends, both favorable and unfavorable to the industry,” Rephann said.

Bill Dickinson, Virginia’s deputy secretary of agriculture and forestry, said the general public is “getting further and further away” from those two things, but said the “believers” in the room understand their importance.

“You believe that both agriculture and forestry have a great impact on the Commonwealth,” Dickinson said. “We knew, we know in our hearts, that we have a great impact on the economy of the Commonwealth. But even we didn’t know how big that impact was.”

Even with the substantial impact, Rephann said, the state agriculture industry can do more. Calling Virginia “an urbanizing state” with opportunities catering to “location, location, location,” he called for state farmers to diversify – if they haven’t already done so – into farmers markets, agritourism, wineries, hay rides, pumpkin patches and pick-your-own places. The more disconnect people have from agriculture, the more “exotic” it is to families.

“It’s going to be finding those specialty and niches that appeal to growing more affluent urban consumers here on the Eastern Seaboard,” Rephann said.

Greg Hicks, communications director for the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, said the conference, which continues through Wednesday, would help shape its legislative agenda while acknowledging achievements in the past year and allowing participants to network with one another.

“It’s education, it’s legislative, it’s recognition,” Hicks said.

Charles Curry, president of the Augusta County Farm Bureau Federation, said he was enjoying the chance to network and hear the presentations. The local federation, he said, proposed minor resolutions; the state federation will take up a number of resolutions today.

Curry said the local federation has been concerned about a federal mandate several years ago to increase ethanol use, and that it would benefit livestock producers by giving them extra feed. Instead, corn prices “have gone through the roof.”

“We’re concerned that those caps [on using corn] are too high and it’s going to run our costs of operations up,” Curry said, saying that it would threaten the poultry industry because of its need for corn and soybeans.

He also continued to push for limiting government’s ability to seize land through eminent domain. Curry said he would also like to see a memorial to federation members who have died in the line of duty. It’s a rare month, he said, when a farmer isn’t killed or injured just in Virginia.

Curry also has seen an upturn in people wanting to buy locally fresh products through farmers markets and grocery stores.

“That is on the move,” Curry said.

John Ikerd, a professor emeritus of agriculture economics at the University of Missouri, said if farmers are willing to “reconnect” to people and the earth, “the new American food system is full of opportunity.”

The local food movement, Ikerd said, is one of the most dynamic sectors of the retail food market. Locavores, or those who want to stay on the “100-mile diet,” prefer buying foods grown close to home.

While organic foods still, at $20 billion, far outpace the $5 billion in sales of local foods, Ikerd said its growth is slowing. He said he wants to see a “natural, organic local, sustainable food movement” that is decades in the making. It would, he said, provide opportunities for small and mid-sized Virginia farmers to compete in the global marketplace.

“We are confronted with a whole host of ecological and environmental challenges, social and economic challenges,” Ikerd said, “and growing indications, folks, that we simply cannot continue doing what we’ve been doing for very much longer, not for our economy, not for our society, not for agriculture, not for our food system.”