Agro business

[lothar]

We have talked about it enough for it to deserve its own thread.
Most of the farming here seems to be cattle and/or tobacco related.
Do we have a good enough soil here to grow food crops?
I am clueless on such matters, maybe one of the others here can help.

[logos]

Absolutely. If the soil can grow tobacco, it can grow food crops. To my understanding, tobacco is a fickle crop, and if it will grow, pretty much anything (non-tropical of course) can. I am thinking about the very basic crops - corn, wheat, not sure about rice, but thats a good one. Our climate is weird, so I am not sure if we could grow rice effectively. I know Arkansas produces thousands of tons of it - literally; so I dont know if there is a significant climate difference enough that we could not grow it here.

Anyhoo, mostly, corn and wheat and maybe even cotton could be grown here I know. Wheat is an essential crop for most anything, and corn can be used as food and ethanol especially. I think with the proper development this county could make some good money from food crops. We need developmental grants and incentives to help the farmers out though and that would require the appropriate leadership within the county to get them. Which is the tricky part of course.

[lothar]

That is good to know. I always heard we didn't have good enough soil here to really grow food and the few good spots we had were all taken by tobacco farmers.

[logos]

Well if we could provide a better market/incentives for food crops, then we might be able to persuade the tobacco farmers into growing other crops.

I am sure there would be some kind of federal developmental grants we could apply for to help get them rolling - but then we would need to have some numbers on the market itself.

It would take some work, but I really think it would be worth it.