Agri culture will prevail

Quick: Name Arkansas’ No. 1 industry.

If you said agriculture, you’re a winner. Not only is agriculture the top industry statewide, it’s also the backbone of Carroll County’s economy and its culture.

The news hasn’t been good recently for Carroll County agriculture.

Tyson Foods, which is Carroll County’s largest employer and which deserves much credit for its immeasurable contributions to the local community over the past 50 years, recently began buying out contracts with local farmers. The ultimate impact of Tyson’s decision won’t be known for some time, but the ripples are sure to have an effect on every aspect of the local economy.

Tyson has been mostly mum on the buyouts, except for a brief statement in which a company spokesman said the Springdale-based poultry giants intends to “honor its obligations” to local contract growers. We’re sure that’s little solace to the farmers whose phones started ringing with bad news before 7 a.m. on a Monday morning.

For all of the positive things Tyson has done for Carroll County — and again, the company’s contributions here have been incalculable — the bottom line is that it is a publicly traded company with shareholders to answer to, and after losing more than $400 million in three months, it’s that aforementioned bottom line that ultimately matters.

We don’t like it, but we do at least understand Tyson’s motivation for what it did. We have more trouble reconciling the actions of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, which decided to slash funding to county fairs across the state and redirect nearly $50,000 to a single private organization.

We have a report on the fair funding fiasco in today’s paper, and we’re still digging for more information on how and why this happened. But we already know enough to agree with one legislator’s description of the whole episode as a “slap in the face” to rural Arkansas and to the young people — many of them right here in Carroll County — who work year-round preparing themselves and their animals for county fairs across the state.

One would think state agriculture secretary Wes Ward would know better than to allow a single private entity to benefit from our tax dollars in this manner, but apparently he didn’t. One also would expect Ward to have some fundamental knowledge of basic agriculture. He likely knows at least a little more now, after a committee of legislators spent a half-hour explaining to him how the cow ate the cabbage.

As we said, agriculture in Carroll County has taken some punches recently. But anyone who thinks our people will stay down for long clearly doesn’t know who or what they’re talking about.

Hard work is a way of life in Carroll County. It’s in our history and it’s in our blood. We may stumble a bit, but we won’t fall. We’ll survive all this, and we’ll be stronger for it.