Written By: Caitlin Joyner
Late winter and early spring has been a season of excitement and growth for VPGA. We started off with a very busy and active legislative session with three bills in the Virginia General Assembly pertaining to peanuts:
-SB 302 to extend the sunset on the peanut excise tax
-SB 300 to establish peanuts as the official state snack of Virginia
-HB 1375 to ban the sale, distribution, and use of paraquat in Virginia
The peanut excise tax was extended for another year, remaining at $5 per ton that comes directly to the Growers Association to allow us to continue to do the work that we do. The state snack bill was tabled until 2027. I plan to get this reintroduced next session and hope to gain further support on this positive piece of legislation to get it passed during the 2027 session. The bill that would ban paraquat in Virginia was defeated. Although the news about the cancellation of paraquat came after the bill had already been defeated, I think it was a valuable learning experience for many of us. The misconceptions around what we do continue to grow, we must make it a priority to make connections with those in places of influence and do our best to be the voice of truth and reason in these situations. I want to thank several parties for their support on these bills: those that communicated with me during that process and provided concern and information, the Board for their work in proofing letters, communicating with legislators, and making several in person visits, countless others who also wrote letters of support and made visits, and the Virginia Agribusiness Council and Virginia Farm Bureau for also working on our behalf. We have been brainstorming ideas on how to continue to establish those connections with legislators in the future.
We then ended February with record attendance at our 78th Annual Peanut Production Meeting. Highlights included updates on research projects and both past and upcoming growing seasons from our outstanding research team, market updates from our National Peanut Board Member Westley Drake and American Peanut Council CEO Luke Blaustein, and presenting many awards, including a commendation from Governor Youngkin for Mr. Wayne Barnes’ many years of service to the Virginia Peanut Board, yield contest winners, and Outstanding Young Peanut Grower award. I appreciate so many of you showing up and engaging with us and hope you will continue to do so in the future. I want to thank our Extension Agents for their extensive roles in coordinating our meeting as well as all our speakers, vendors, and sponsors.
The real highlight of this season has been National Peanut Month in March. Increasing our promotion of National Peanut Month has been a focus of mine in the last few years that I have been in this position as I see it as an area of growth for our organization and a natural time to highlight peanut growers and Virginia peanuts. This year we expanded the reach of our Virginia Peanuts commercial featuring two of our growers: Richard Kitchen and Wesley Barnes by airing it in two markets this year: Richmond and Hampton Roads. We also did two live interviews in those markets on the 12 About Town show in Richmond as well as the Hampton Roads Show. Filming the Hampton Roads Show was a new and fun experience and I want to thank our President, Randy Everett, for volunteering his time to do that interview with me. Those experiences created a lot of buzz in the community as well as online, helping to dramatically increase our social media engagement.
Another new event added this year during Peanut Month was the Virginia School Nutrition Association Trade Show. We were able to discuss peanut allergy mitigation in school settings with many key stakeholders in Virginia’s school districts. This was another unique learning opportunity for me as I was able to get a better understanding of the concerns regarding peanut allergies in our school communities and establish meaningful connections.
Lastly, we were able to continue our partnership with the VDACS Commissioner’s Office and the Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry’s Office with their annual peanut butter drive in support of Peanut Month. The offices were able to collect and donate over 100 lbs. of peanut butter to FeedMore in Richmond. In addition, VPGA and Peanut Proud also donated 7 pallets of peanut butter to FeedMore to be distributed to the 7 area food banks across the state. With a few other industry-related meetings dispersed in between each of these events, it was a very busy month, but a very successful and rewarding one as well.
As we gear up to begin planting this year, we know many challenges are ahead and agriculture as a whole is facing many obstacles, but we are fortunate to have a great group here in Virginia working together to find solutions to those challenges and make our industry better. Despite the challenges, we have an exciting agenda ahead for the 2026 season. I wish you all a successful and safe planting season.
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