Trends in Alternative Cropping Patterns and Strategies for Research

Abstract

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be with you today. I am reminded as we get into this discussion to reiterate what has been said already, that there are no silver bullets. As many of the speakers we've heard this morning are indicating, we're not aware of one alternative. Certainly, there are a lot of alternatives that ought to be considered, and that people make money doing, including organics and some of the ideas that are on the program this afternoon-including the ones I'm going to discuss. But the universal alternative doesn't exist, and in fact for some people the good alternative will be to continue to produce tobacco, which of course is not precluded by this discussion. Each farmer has to consider what their resources are and what the market dictates. This means that we have to figure out who our competition is-it probably includes people sitting in this room.