State officials told Frederick County farmers what most of them already know: 80% of Virginia farms gross under $50,000
Del. Delores Oates convened VDACS Commissioner Charles Green and Virginia Tourism Corporation staff for an agritourism summit on August 28, with regulatory barriers and farmland preservation on the agenda.
Del. Delores Oates hosted an agritourism summit in Frederick County on August 28, pulling in producers from Frederick, Warren and Clarke counties alongside VDACS Commissioner Charles Green, Sen. Timmy French, and Katie Connor and Kelli Weaver of the Virginia Tourism Corporation.
The number that framed the day: roughly 80% of Virginia farms gross less than $50,000 a year, and many of those operators hold off-farm jobs to stay on the land.
“If we’re going to protect our farmland, then we need to expand the opportunities for our farmers so that they can sustain the farmland,” Oates said.
Agriculture remains Virginia’s largest industry. The programs on the agenda were Virginia Grown, Virginia’s Finest, the Virginia Verified Beef Program, and the Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund.
The context the summit sits in
Regulatory barriers were on the agenda, and the timing is not accidental. Clarke County, one of the three counties represented, is the defendant in a suit filed by a farm brewery over event restrictions adopted in 2023. Greene County supervisors debated an agritourism event cap the same day this summit met. Loudoun County will take up winery, brewery and distillery event rules on November 9.
An agritourism summit that discusses “regulatory barriers” in the Shenandoah Valley in 2026 is discussing zoning, whether or not anyone says the word.
