Going big ... or going home

NEW HOPE — New Hope beef cattle and poultry farmer Bud Shaver owns and leases more than 1,000 acres of land in Augusta County for his operation.

“It’s 24-7,” Shaver said of his livelihood, which includes growing hundreds of thousands of chickens annually for Pilgrim’s Pride and feeding and raising 500 beef cattle and calves.

At the age of 37, Shaver believes opportunities are there for other young farmers.

“They will have to have people give them opportunities and they have to be committed,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2007 Census of Agriculture indicates a continuing trend toward small residential farms where the farmer has an outside job, or large farms like Shaver’s where substantial production is occurring.

Medium-sized farms are on the decline, the census said.

While no one interviewed sees a demise of farming, one Augusta County expert believes more direction is needed for an industry that contributes more than $140 million in revenues to the county annually.

The USDA report indicates that 36 percent of American farms are residential or lifestyle with sales of less than $250,000.

Another 21 percent are retirement farms, which also report sales of less than $250,000.

Shaver said a small farmer is likely to grow vegetables or have a few cows “to consume grass on the property.”

Jason Carter, Augusta County’s animal science extension agent, is not surprised by the trends in the USDA study.

“Particularly when you look at the value of land increasing and the aging farm population,” Carter said.

Carter said his experience in Augusta County is that the owner of a small farm wants 100 acres of property or less.

“He has a job and wants a farm,” he said.

Retired residents of farms are those who “felt they could financially afford to leave the workforce,” he said. The farm could also provide retirees a food source.

Mount Solon farmer and Augusta County Farm Bureau President Charles Curry said more direction is needed to oversee farming in Augusta County, Virginia’s second most productive agricultural county.

Curry said 32 recommendations made by a county agricultural task force three years ago have been mostly ignored, including permanent leadership.

“It’s the largest industry in Augusta County and there is no CEO,” he said.

Curry has watched larger farms being sold in pieces. He said that is a trend that cannot continue.

“You can’t have farms subdivided and split up,” he said. Curry said some of the cutting of farms dealt with development rights and others with leadership.

Shaver said while farming was once a way of life for prior generations, it is now more of a business.

He can look at the vast acreage he farms and explain that it was home to five small farms before World War II.

While beef cattle farming is still the dominant farming type in Augusta County, the current economic crisis is taking its toll.

Augusta County Board of Supervisors Chairman Larry Howdyshell, a Mount Solon beef cattle farmer, said consumers are not purchasing meat the way they were before the slowdown.

“People in bigger cities are not buying the bigger cuts of meat,” said Howdyshell, who explained that translates into fewer purchases at the grocery store or a smaller steak at the local steakhouse.

Long-term, Carter said agriculture will remain prominent in Augusta County and across the country.

He said farmers in the near future are more likely to be those who enjoy it, but don’t need it to survive.

“There is a new generation of farmers who do it as a second source of income, not as their primary source,” he said.