For Tobacco Farmer, a Way of Life Changes

Source from:  Lynchburg News & Advance September 28, 2006 09/30/2006

Who would have thunk it? as Dizzy Dean, the late major leaguer and St. Louis broadcaster, would have asked. They're fishing for shrimp in the red clay of Campbell County that once produced tobacco. As Mark Guthrie sees it, his half-acre freshwater shrimp pond is a way to keep the no-longer profitable family tobacco farm in business. The shrimp pond is a sign of the times for this fifth-generation tobacco farmer who sold his quota in the federal tobacco buyout program in 2004 when the government paid some $10 billion to farmers like him to eliminate the tobacco quota system and its price supports. As Guthrie explained recently to Bethany Fuller of The News & Advance, he wants to live on and work the 70 acres his grandfather bought more than 100 years ago. He wants to keep it in the family for his son, Adam, and he wants to continue to make it earn a profit. It's an attitude that permeates the former Southside tobacco fields as their owners acknowledge the end of Virginia's once top cash crop and seek other uses for the land. Guthrie is one of them. "I guess a lot of people who didn't come from the farm wouldn't understand it," he said wistfully. "The farm has always taken care of us. I am bound and determined that something will come of this farm that I can make a living at." He has planted broccoli and sweet corn to supplement his income, but his latest endeavor is shrimp - freshwater shrimp grown in a spring-fed pond in a field that once grew tobacco. The former tobacco farmer, who has quit smoking, turned to shrimp because it is something different - "something that no one else was doing." He studied freshwater shrimp, learning how to create the right pH balance of the pond, what to feed the shrimp and how to keep the plankton from consuming all the oxygen in the water. Part of the learning process took him to shrimp farms in Kentucky where fields that once grew burley tobacco are now supporting shrimp ponds. By June, Guthrie was ready to plant his first crop - juvenile freshwater shrimp from Southeast Asia. Brian Nerrie, assistant professor and extension agent at Virginia State University in Petersburg, says there are about 15 other freshwater shrimp farms in Virginia. He said the state's moderate climate provides the 110-day growing period needed for the shrimp to mature. Most harvests come in late September or early October. Guthrie harvested his first crop last week and sold it from a stand on Virginia 40 just past his farm near Brookneal. The shrimp pond, as Guthrie sees it, is a piece of the puzzle he's putting together to keep the farm in production. "I want to continue to make a living on this farm," he said. "I hope this works." Lots of other former tobacco farmers are rooting for him to keep the family farm producing - even shrimp. Enditem