1/11 Saying the current 1950s-era building is out-dated, Virginia ag leaders are asking state lawmakers to help fund a proposed $3.64 million livestock teaching arena for Virginia Tech.
“A large multipurpose livestock teaching and events arena at Virginia Tech has been a critical need for more than a decade,” said Martha Moore, director of public affairs for the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation.
The Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has an undergraduate enrollment of 1,722 students.
More than 40 percent of those students are in animal science departments and the two-year ag technology program. These and other students in majors throughout the university have laboratory courses in which hands-on training with large animals is part of the learning experience, Moore said.
The decades-old facility is inadequate to serve the needs of the students and Virginia’s eight major livestock and poultry industries.
Each year, those industries compete in a global market and generate $1.7 billion in revenue in the Old Dominion.
Privately raised funds and pledges will amount to almost $1.82 million, and ag leaders are asking the Virginia General Assembly to appropriate matching funds, Moore said.
Some of the 88 county Farm Bureaus in Virginia have donated money for the proposed facility, said Gray Coyner, a cattle producer and member of the VFBF Board of Directors. The existing building is “totally out of date,” added Coyner, who was an animal science major in the late 1960s and took classes in the facility. “It was getting cramped then.”
Virginia’s horse industry has inspired students to pursue equine studies, and more students are interested in animal studies in general.
The old facility is not big enough and modern enough to accommodate that growing trend, Coyner said.
“Virginia has had a long history of animal agriculture, and so many students coming into animal studies are not familiar with livestock and have not had the pleasure of growing up on a farm,” Coyner added.