EDITORIAL PAGE
LETTERS

Challenge to Farmers

The Kentucky farmers have for generations planted tobacco and have done the
hard work to see the plant through the several important steps until the crop
was on the floor of a tobacco warehouse in Lexington to be sold. There was,
and still is, a great market for Kentucky burley.

However, this situation could change and the Kentucky farmer should be
prepared for change.

The Kentucky farmer has planted tobacco as his main crop because he could
make more money on it per acre than any other crop. And he had himself and
his family to support.

He was at the mercy of the weather, too much water and blue mold, and now he
is an the mercy of the advancement of medicine and science. The farmer has
lost the support of powerful men in Washington not his own congressional
delegation but others.

The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture should work with the
Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the commissioner of agriculture, Billy
Ray Smith, who is a man of vast experience in agriculture and agribusiness.
He is prepared to lead, able to lead and is leading.

The UK College of Agriculture and the various leaders of agriculture should
do their best to find another main crop or two crops that would bring in good
money for the farmer and his family. In the search for new crops, industrial
hemp should be considered.

Farming in Kentucky is a way of life, and the small family farm has to be a
place of great values, as it is in my native state of South Carolina.

Norwood H. Dickson
Wilmore, Kentucky