Virginia lost 15% of our total agricultural acreage between 2002 and 2022. District 72 (Amelia, Nottoway, Powhatan, and northwest Chesterfield) has been losing farm acreage faster than the state overall. We lost over a quarter of our total District agricultural acreage farmed since 2002. Over one quarter (28%) of our District’s 2002 farms are gone now. Amelia County has lost the most acreage (32%) and most farms (45%).
How can we save the remaining farms and our domestic food production?
Farms are a business, first and foremost. If you don’t have a healthy balance sheet, you won’t be able to stay in the farming business unless you have an off-farm income. The key to saving farms is to ensure that farmers can get more for their products than they cost to produce. Passing ordinances and laws trying to prevent farmland from being converted to other uses steals property rights from farmers without compensation and forces farm sales to wealthy buyers who can make the farm a hobby. Chesterfield and Powhatan County average farm net cash income–that’s income before you factor in mortgages and depreciation–has been negative for years now!
We need to save farms by making it possible for farmers to earn a living on those farms. Farmers face high input costs, conflicting regulations, labor shortages, lack of healthcare access, barriers to adding value to their products, and barriers to selling their products.
Farmers are suffering from regulatory whiplash. We’ve got a mashup of band aids on top of band aids. Everyone wants safe food and safe environments, farmers most of all. Most of these regulations tell us “how” to farm. We can simplify regulations by changing our regulatory approach from requiring specific practices to requiring specific results. Result-oriented regulations will allow farmers to achieve, for example, a low bacteria count in products or runoff in the most cost-effective way for their land and product.
Farmers need more competing purchasers for their products. District 72 saw the problems of having only one purchaser for a product in this region, when Tyson closed the Henrico poultry processing plant. Large poultry and pork processors trap farmers as ‘contract growers’ in years-long, sole-purchaser contracts. The farmers must mortgage their land to build facilities exclusive to that processor. They end up working 24/7 for less than the federal minimum wage. Their spouse has to get an off-farm job so their family has health insurance.
For other products, it’s way too difficult to sell directly to grocery stores, which have become multi-state behemoths. Grocery stores advertise commitments to local food sources, but these are a tiny fraction of what they are selling. A 10-state grocery chain serving District 72 brags about a couple hundred products on their shelves from farmers in their entire region. That’s a drop in the bucket, not a sustainable food system.
Changes in federal policies—including trade and labor policies—impact farm production, markets, and prices. At the state level, Virginia can help farmers adapt by enhancing our state’s “Freedom to Farm” laws to allow farmers flexibility to change their products and practices without having to get state and local government approvals. Virginia farmers must be able to respond more quickly to market, weather, and labor changes.
Virginia already has a model for increasing flexibility and incentives for a new farm model: grapes and wine production. Virginia has given wineries special tax and organizational status over the past few decades, and now Virginia is fifth in the US for wine grape production. We need to extend these laws to other farm products to encourage farmer investment in value-added products. This will strengthen both our farmers and our local food systems. Consumers and farmers will benefit.
Of course, as businesses, farmers will benefit from laws that help all Virginia businesses. Lower cost of living, greater housing availability, greater healthcare access in rural areas, fewer restrictions on employer-sponsored health insurance, and improved customer service at state agencies will help all businesses, not just farmers.
President Eisenhower once remarked that “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield.” We need representatives in Richmond who have been on the front lines of feeding our citizens.