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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a variety of appointments on Oct. 25, including naming farmer James L. Babb III, of Windsor, to Virginia’s Cotton Board.

This will be Babb’s second three-year term on the board after having been appointed to his first term by former Gov. Ralph S. Northam.

Babb, a sixth-generation farmer, reflected on what it has meant to be called upon by the governor to serve on the Cotton Board.

“I think it’s a very important thing to do because you’re working for the governor, but you’re really working for the cotton farmers,” he said, “because cotton farmers, when they sell their cotton, they pay what we call as a checkoff, so every bale, you pay a small fee, and that goes into a bigger account, and us, as the Virginia Cotton Board, decides where that money should be allocated for, and most of it goes to research. There are a few other things that it might go for, like education or other stuff that is cotton-related.”

He indicated that the research being paid for is focused around production.

“This board tries to focus more on the production, because cotton farmers are paying into this fund, and they expect to get a return in the way of information to try to better their cotton crop,” he said.

Babb has been farming full time now for a decade. Babb Farms Inc. operates about two miles out of town in Isle of Wight County and also in the city of Suffolk. Included in the operation is cotton, peanuts, soybeans, corn and beef cattle.

“Previous to that, I graduated from Virginia Tech in 2014, and I was working on the farm part time during the summers then,” he said. “It’s in my blood, and I think my family’s been farming cotton since 1995.”

Babb indicated that he came to be in line for the appointment to the Cotton Board after a phone call from Phillip Edwards, president of Southern Cotton Growers Inc.

“He asked if I would be willing to participate, and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do what I can,’” Babb said.

The governor’s news release indicated that the Cotton Board consists of eight members appointed by the governor who can serve up to two consecutive three-year terms. The board is tasked with developing activities related to research, education, promotion and use of cotton.

Babb elaborated further on the biggest responsibility board members have.

“We’ll normally sit down for a full day sometime around February or March, before cotton is planted, and we’ll get all the paperwork in before we have this big meeting, and we’ll get a bunch of doctors, researchers that come in, and they’re looking for funds to do a project,” he said. “But we have to pick and choose which one is going to benefit the cotton farmers.

“And so we’ll listen to I’m going to say maybe eight to 10 different researchers or education promotions, and they’ll present the information and how they’re going to do the research, and basically we’ll pick from there,” he continued. “That same day, they also, if they did any research for us the previous year, they’ll have a presentation on what they found, and we can use that information and take it back to the farmers. Most of the time they will publish that. 

“Also, later in the summer, mid-summer, we’ll also go to field days for the various research people that are doing the research projects and check up on them and make sure everything is kind of to our liking,” he added. “And throughout the year, we have to allocate the funds when they need them, but no more than what we told them they would get.

“And then that cycle starts over next year, and we’ll listen to what they did from the previous year and so on,” he said.

He shared what he hopes to accomplish in his second term on the Cotton Board.

“I’ve had three more years of farming, and I’ve got some ideas in my head of more research that I would like to see, and maybe when I hear those presentations that I’ll probably have more suggestions than I did the first three years, more things that maybe I would like to change about how they go about their research or things that I would like to see so that all the farmers can get more benefit out of it,” he said.