Over my 20 years in state-level economic development, my favorite part of the job has remained the same: driving across this beautiful commonwealth and working with entrepreneurs to improve their communities by starting or growing a business. Most of these years have been spent assisting agriculture and forestry enterprises, so I know that the bucolic landscape I love, the fields and forests, barns and buildings, are all part of someone else’s livelihood. And behind each of these farms is a complex network of local decisions —regulations, incentives, taxes, markets — that either help that farm thrive or make its future more uncertain.
I often joke that while I may not have grown up in agriculture, what I have learned in my years serving the industry is that the work is hard, the pay is terrible and it’s risky as hell — but people do it because they love it, and that is something for which we should all be very grateful. Did I mention that agriculture is also Virginia’s largest private sector industry?
The complexity of farming, the diversity of agriculture in Virginia and its often-unpredictable economics can make knowing how best to assist the industry difficult in its own right. That’s why I’m pleased to share an important new resource that can help bring us all up to the challenge. It is the newly released Planning for Agriculture in Virginia Toolkit, developed by our friends at American Farmland Trust, in partnership with a team of stakeholders bringing a wide range of expertise to its creation.
As a member of the advisory committee that guided the project, I have seen the creation and evolution of this resource firsthand, and I am proud to endorse it. It includes information on right-to-farm protections, farm-to-school initiatives and investing in processing infrastructure, as well as market-driven solutions to preserving farmland, making farms profitable and transitioning these complex businesses between generations. In other words, it’s about saving land and growing opportunities for farmers to steward the land and thrive.
In addition to the breadth and quality of the content, what I find most notable about the toolkit is its format. Rather than a static, printed handbook, this toolkit is instead an always-up-to-date, digital guide filled with a variety of tools and approaches for taking on the challenges and opportunities facing agriculture today, all in a well-organized, easy-to-navigate format. Each section has links to pages filled with useful and digestible fact sheets, videos, ready-to-go presentations and a host of other materials designed to help busy people efficiently educate and advocate for the agricultural issues that matter to them. There are also numerous case studies illustrating stories of proven, actionable steps that help farmers thrive and rural economies prosper.
The Toolkit is designed for Virginia, but the principles are universal. If your community values farms, it needs to plan for them and take action to support them. I hope local leaders, citizens and those of us in the economic development community will use this resource as a springboard for action to support our largest industry and the many tangible and intangible benefits it brings us.
Visit the Toolkit here: farmlandinfo.org/planning-for-agriculture-in-virginia/
Stephen Versen is deputy director of the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission.
