Your membership helps open up new farm marketing options

With any business venture, there are always challenges to staying profitable.

Your Farm Bureau membership helps the organization assist farmers in developing business strategies to meet those challenges and continue producing fresh, local food for your family.

Farm Bureau helped grain producers sell more than 1.8 million bushels last year. And our risk management program showed more than 2,300 producers how to reduce their risk in the seafood, beef, cotton, dairy and grain markets. More than 1,600 farmers get market analysis information every week in Virginia Farm Bureau’s risk management newsletter.

Farm Bureau also provides staff support for the Virginia Foundation for Agriculture, Innovation and Rural Sustainability, an independent, nonprofit organization offering technical services to rural and agricultural businesses.

This is where your membership helps support an even larger business community: The foundation has launched a Web-based, online business planning and development program that will allow anyone interested in starting a small business to assess his or her financial needs and build a financial plan.

Among recent Virginia FAIRS success stories are the following:

• The Virginia Aquaculture Association has established a cooperative to help producers market their fish.

• The Cumberland County Farm Bureau secured a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to study generating energy and organic fertilizer from poultry waste.

• A sheep producers’ association in Scott County has undertaken a study how it can market to grocery chains in Southwest Virginia.

• Regional cattlemen’s associations in Virginia have begun exploring how they can retain more profit by building processing facilities to serve their communities.