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AREA FARMERS WAY AHEAD OF STATE PLAN IN SEEKING NEW CROPS TO REPLACE TOBACCO

If area farmers are going to thrive in a post-tobacco economy, they are
going to need more help from the state. And a lot more vision.

Frankly, the long-awaited report from the governor's Office of Agricultural
Policy is a disappointment. While the report recognizes that Kentucky
farmers need to kick the tobacco habit and develop markets for new farm
products, it says little about just what role the state should play in
developing those markets.

As far as diversification is concerned, area farmers already are doing more
and exhibiting more vision that the plan projects for this part of Kentucky.

The plan says Eastern Kentucky should focus on timber, take a forest
inventory, recruit high-end furniture makers, and foster ginseng,
goldenseal, herbs and mushrooms.

Well, logging already is a growing industry in this region, and state
economic development officials have been talking about recruiting furniture
makers and other wood-product industries for decades, so far with little
success.

Ginseng has never been successfully grown commercially, and if it were, the
bottom would soon fall out of the market. One reason that it is so
lucrative a product is because it is so rare.

As evidenced by The Independent's series on farming by John Flavell and
Jerry Pennington, area farmers are way ahead of the state plan in
experimenting with new products.

Lawrence County farmer Roy Holbrook has raised cantaloupes, pumpkins,
watermelons, and cabbage in an attempt to make money outside of tobacco,
with mixed results. Dean and Grace Ramey have built two greenhouses on
their Carter County farm.

Mason County farmers George and Mary Jones have established Bluegrass Meat
Goats. They buy goats from farmers in Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas
and ship them to slaughterhouses in the Northeast, where there is a growing
ethnic market for goat meat.

Holbrook also believes grapes may be in the future for Northeastern
Kentucky farmers. So does Boyd County Extension Agent Lyndall Harned. Some
experts believe farmers could net about $2,000 an acre from a successful
vineyard. And grapes are particularly well suited for this region's hilly
terrain.

In short, area farmers know they can no longer depend on tobacco as a
steady source of income, and they are looking to establish niche markets
for products well suited for this region.

One problem is that those in Frankfort do not view this region as an
agricultural area. That's evidenced by the fact that Northeastern Kentucky
was completely shut out from the $11 million the Kentucky Agricultural
Development Board awarded to 59 projects that promote agricultural
diversification. Instead, the bulk of that money went to projects in
Central and Western Kentucky.

While this region certainly has smaller and fewer farms than Central and
Western Kentucky, agriculture adds much more to the area's economy than
most people realize. And the future of farming in this region is not
limited to just chopping down trees or combing the hills for ginseng.

If fruit and vegetable farming is going to thrive in this region, it is
going to take more than just adding more farmer's markets where those
products can be sold from the backs of trucks. If area farmers are to
succeed in switching to cattle, they need somewhere closer than Kansas or
Oklahoma to sell their animals.

There is untapped potential here. The Wurtland riverport developed by
Combined Terminals could be an excellent shipping spot for farm products.
Railroads could transport more than just coal to distant states.

Gov. Paul Patton has said he envisions the state spending some $60 million
a year to help farmers diversify and develop new markets. That money will
come from the $3.65 billion Kentucky is getting from cigarette companies as
its share of an historic settlement to a series of lawsuits filed by
states. In fact, the Kentucky General Assembly requested the recent study
to help it decide just how to spend that money. It just didn't get much
help from that study.

Well, some of that money needs to be spent in this region. Sure, we have
fewer full-time farmers than other parts of the state, and our hilly
terrain limits what farmers can raise, but the importance of area
agriculture should not be ignored.

Everyone realizes marketing and market development are the key to
agricultural diversification in Kentucky. It's just that farmers need more
than a vague plan to develop those markets.