Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 17, 1993 TAG: 9307170144
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
When none responded Friday at Virginia Tech's annual Animal Industry Day, Bobby Moser said, "Maybe there should be."
"This is not your father's agriculture," said Moser, dean of Ohio State University's College of Agriculture.
"The world's changing. We've got to change with it if we're going to survive."
Moser's suggestion raised more than a few eyebrows beneath the baseball caps and cowboy hats worn by Tech alumni attending the event.
Yet, unless farmers come to the table with regulators or activists, "Environmental concerns will be eating us alive," said Ike Eller, a retired Tech animal science professor.
The recurring message was that farmers need to be flexibly involved in the increasingly complex world beyond their fields.
Andy Swiger, Tech's interim dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, put it symbolically.
He reminded the estimated 700 farmers gathered at the school's Livestock Center that it's less expensive to build gates than to string fences.
In recent years, more stringent environmental regulations and changing public tastes have made many farmers feel besieged, said James Bennett, who runs a beef cattle operation in Campbell County.
"It does make it more difficult to make a living," he added.
"Sometimes we wish these issues would just go away. They're not going to," Moser said.
Much of the controversy about issues such as ground water quality, use of pesticides and herbicides, animal welfare and uncontaminated meat is unnecessary, Moser said.
"They affect my business as much as anybody else's," said Bennett.
Communication between farmers and others who question their agricultural methods needs to be improved, said several speakers at the event.
"We've got a lot of PR work to do," Bennett said.
The public often misunderstands agriculture because most Americans moved away from the farm generations ago, Moser said.
"We don't have a built-in understanding like we used to. We in agriculture are in the minority."
Farmers also need to be more sophisticated about satisfying consumer demands and marketing their commodities, Moser added.
"Consumers want a low-fat, low-cholesterol product. We have an obligation to produce that."
Also, given the public's concerns over tainted meat, "We have got to gain their confidence that we have a safe product," he said.
It's also important for Virginia's economy that the livestock industry continue to thrive, Eller said.
A recent survey indicated that the state has a dwindling number of farms and decreasing acreage devoted to agriculture.
The average value of land has skyrocketed, influencing many veteran farmers to sell their farms to developers, Eller said.
"They feel their only recourse to live out their lives is to sell," he said.
For local governments, agricultural and pastoral land is significantly less expensive to maintain than land developed for residential use, he said.
by CNB