ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995            TAG: 9512140034
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-8  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER 

WILL LIVELIHOODS GO UP IN SMOKE? TOBACCO FARMERS LOOK TO LAWMAKERS TO PROTECT - OR REPLACE - THEIR CROP

Virginia's tobacco industry will be looking to next year's General Assembly for help to protect or replace the state's major cash crop.

A coalition looking for ways to help tobacco-growing communities cope with the crop's diminishing role presented its recommendations Wednesday to a special General Assembly subcommittee.

However, because two of five members were absent for the Hotel Roanoke meeting, the subcommittee delayed acting on the proposals.

The Tobacco Communities Project - composed of university researchers, state and local officials, tobacco farmers and others - developed a four-point plan following community meetings this year. The project focuses both on helping farmers do a better job of raising tobacco and finding other sources of income.

Tobacco is Virginia's largest cash crop, grown on 8,400 farms and providing $169 million in farm sales last year, according to federal reports.

"As [tobacco] goes, the rural community goes to a large extent," said the subcommittee's chairman, Del. Mitchell Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville. He suggested that perhaps more attention should be paid to economic development in rural areas.

His comments mirrored one of the coalition's recommendations that efforts should be made to ensure that off-farm jobs are available in rural areas and that job training be available for people applying for those jobs.

The state's economic development efforts are aimed at locating manufacturing plants in industrial parks, but nothing is being done to help develop the state's agriculture industry, said Wayne Purcell, an agricultural economist at Virginia Tech. "The state has a role to play," he said.

Purcell stressed that recommendations were written without an intent to tell the state's tobacco-farm families what they ought to do. Purcell warned, though, that outside pressures will accelerate change in Southside and Southwest Virginia tobacco counties over the next decade.

A study prepared by John Knapp, economic research director at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, notes that domestic consumption of cigarettes has dropped significantly because of health concerns.

Also working against U.S. tobacco farmers, Knapp said, are trends toward more tobacco production abroad. Compounding all that, he said, are threats of higher U.S. taxes on tobacco use and the dismantling of the government's market controls that help support the price of tobacco.

Purcell predicted that the moving of tobacco-product plants oversees will cause major problems for places like Richmond, which are centers of manufacturing for cigarettes.

Lorenza Lyons, dean of the agriculture school at Virginia State University in Petersburg, said researchers there have been studying crops to supplement tobacco but have yet to find a commodity that can replace tobacco's income potential for farmers. If supplemental crops are going to be successful, he said, the state needs to provide farmers with help in marketing them.

LENGTH: Medium:   60 lines
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC:  2 charts by staff. Map by staff.