11/26/02
Are terrorists interested in going onto Virginia farms to cause havoc?
That’s a question that FBI special operations agent Gerald M. Lyons will examine as he talks to nearly 750 farmers at the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation’s 77th Annual Convention. The event will be Dec. 2-4 in Hot Springs.
Lyons, whose expertise is in weapons of mass destruction, will join former Lt. Gov. John H. Hager at 1:45 p.m. on Dec. 2, to talk about the potential for terrorism on Virginia farms. They will be part of an educational conference titled “Just How Vulnerable Are We to Terrorism?” Hager is assistant to the governor for commonwealth preparedness.
The timely issue of farm transition planning also will come to the forefront of the convention at The Homestead. Tens of thousands of acres of Virginia farmland will change ownership in the next decade, and ag leaders want that land to stay in production rather than undergo commercial development. The American Farmland Trust study “Farming on the Edge: Sprawling Development Threatens America’s Best Farmland” finds that Virginia developed 105,000 acres of its highest-quality farmland between 1992 and 1997, ranking among the top 20 states for prime acreage lost.
The educational conference “Let’s Talk Transition” will run concurrently with the bioterrorism conference. Speakers will be Bill Dickinson, assistant commissioner in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; Jesse Richardson, assistant professor at Virginia Tech; and Bill Scruggs, VDACS ag development project manager.