Imagine Virginia walking into a global economic-development pitch alongside North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina.

The competing states arrive ready to discuss advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure, aerospace, biotechnology and the industrial demands of the next decade.

Virginia sends in a Thomas Jefferson look-alike.

He is wearing a tricorn hat. He carries a basket of Suffolk peanuts. He opens the presentation by explaining that agriculture is Virginia’s largest private industry and forestry is its third largest. He talks about Monticello and the smell of chickens in the Shenandoah Valley.

It might be charming at a tourism event.

As an economic identity, it tells companies and investors that Virginia remains preoccupied with its past.

Old. Slow. Ceremonial. Backward-looking.

That is essentially the message Virginia continues to send when it organizes its economic hierarchy around agriculture and forestry while treating maritime and defense as specialized sectors belonging mainly to Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.

Agriculture matters. Forestry matters. Farmers, foresters and rural communities deserve serious state support.

But calling agriculture Virginia’s largest private industry is not an impartial finding produced by comparing every major industry under the same methodology. It is a branding claim built around an exceptionally broad definition of agriculture.

Virginia has stretched the definition until it includes food processing, beverage manufacturing, pet food, bakeries, breweries, textile production, warehousing, distribution, suppliers and household spending supported by workers throughout the extended supply chain.

Then the Commonwealth repeats the resulting number as though agriculture simply defeated every other private industry in a neutral statewide ranking.

It did not.

Virginia is branding the wrong economy.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says agriculture is the Commonwealth’s largest private industry, generating an annual economic impact of $82.3 billion, supporting more than 381,800 jobs and producing $43.8 billion in value-added impact.

Agriculture and forestry together are credited with more than $105 billion in economic impact and over 490,000 jobs. The Governor’s office has repeatedly described agriculture and forestry as Virginia’s number one and number three private industries, including while launching the Commonwealth’s first Farm and Forest Prosperity Plan.

Those numbers come from a legitimate University of Virginia economic-impact study.

But the title attached to them is far less objective than Virginia’s public statements suggest.

The study did not take agriculture, defense, health care, technology, maritime commerce, construction, financial services and every other Virginia industry, define them consistently, apply identical multipliers and rank the results.

It measured the extended economic footprint of agriculture and forestry.

That is an important distinction.

The study counts direct business activity. It then counts purchases from suppliers. It then estimates the additional economic activity created when workers supported by those businesses spend their income on housing, health care, restaurants, retail and other household expenses.

Those indirect and induced impacts are standard components of economic-impact analysis. There is nothing inherently illegitimate about using them.

The problem arises when Virginia presents agriculture’s fully multiplied ecosystem as directly comparable to narrower descriptions of other industries.

Agriculture gets to bring its cousins, vendors, customers and neighbors to the weigh-in.

Everyone else is expected to step on the scale alone.

In 2024, Virginia farmers generated approximately $4.55 billion in agricultural commodity cash receipts.

That is a substantial industry. It is not an $82.3 billion industry.

The enormous gap between those two numbers is filled by processing, manufacturing, distribution, supplier purchases and induced spending.

The underlying economic-impact study explains that Virginia agriculture extends beyond farms to food and beverage processing, agricultural-fiber manufacturing, warehousing and related distribution. Its extended-processing categories include businesses such as bakeries, breweries, coffee and tea manufacturers, pet-food manufacturers, candy companies, frozen-food operations, soft-drink producers and seafood processors.

Some of these businesses may use Virginia agricultural products extensively.

Others can import most of their ingredients from outside the Commonwealth and locate in Virginia because of workforce, transportation, consumer markets, water, energy or proximity to the Port of Virginia.

Yet they can still be included in the economic universe that allows Virginia to declare agriculture its largest private industry.

Consider what that means.

A brewery using grain grown in another state can become part of Virginia agriculture.

A coffee processor importing beans through a port can become part of Virginia agriculture.

A pet-food manufacturer purchasing ingredients from a national supply chain can become part of Virginia agriculture.

A bakery operating primarily to serve a major population center can become part of Virginia agriculture.

Their suppliers can then be counted.

Economic activity supported by their workers can be counted.

The number grows, and the state places the entire result underneath a picture of a farm.

That is not necessarily false.

But it is constructed.

The word “agriculture” is being asked to carry an industrial ecosystem far larger than what the average Virginian would reasonably understand agriculture to mean.

The Commonwealth applies a similar treatment to forestry. Governor Abigail Spanberger has made wood products one of the clearest organizing priorities of her young administration. In April, she created the Virginia Wood Council to expand markets for timber and wood-based businesses. In June, she signed legislation establishing a Farm and Forest Prosperity Plan while again repeating the claim that agriculture and forestry are Virginia’s first- and third-largest private industries.

Virginia says forestry is its third-largest private industry, supporting more than 108,000 jobs and contributing roughly $21 billion to $23.6 billion annually, depending on the state source and study year being cited.

But forestry’s economic definition is not limited to planting, managing and harvesting trees.

It reaches into wood-products manufacturing, pulp and paper production, furniture, cabinets, containers, prefabricated buildings and other downstream manufacturing activities. It then includes supplier and induced effects.

Again, that may be useful for studying the broader forest-products supply chain.

It is far less useful as proof that forestry objectively ranks third among every private industry in Virginia.

A manufactured-home operation is presented as evidence of forestry’s scale.

A cabinet factory is presented as evidence of forestry’s scale.

A paper-container plant is presented as evidence of forestry’s scale.

But when a maritime manufacturer produces nuclear submarine components, the state does not necessarily place that company inside a comparably expansive maritime category, add its suppliers, incorporate employee spending and proclaim maritime Virginia’s largest private industry.

The methodology is not the problem.

The inconsistency is.

The Port of Virginia’s economic-impact study found that port-related commerce generated $124.1 billion in output, $63 billion in Virginia gross state product and approximately 565,000 full- and part-time jobs during fiscal year 2022.

Every one of those headline numbers exceeds the figures Virginia uses to call agriculture its largest private industry.

The port study is also broad. It includes economic activity associated with cargo moving through Virginia and therefore overlaps with agriculture, manufacturing, retail, logistics and other sectors.

That does not discredit the study.

It demonstrates the larger point.

When agriculture is treated as an ecosystem, it becomes enormous.

When maritime commerce is treated as an ecosystem, it becomes even larger.

Neither result should be casually converted into a clean ranking without acknowledging overlaps, definitions and differences in methodology.

Yet Virginia confidently awards agriculture the crown while rarely describing the maritime economy with the same political clarity.

The Commonwealth does not consistently tell the world that Virginia is one of America’s most powerful maritime states.

It tells the world it grows peanuts, raises chickens and harvests timber.

All of those things are true.

They are not the most important truth about Virginia’s position in the modern economy.

The argument becomes even stronger when defense is included.

Virginia received $68.5 billion in direct Department of Defense spending in fiscal year 2023, the second-highest total of any state. Virginia was also among the states where defense spending represented the largest share of state gross domestic product. On any given year, Hampton Roads has more defense spending than anywhere in the United States. Couple this with Northern Virginia and it’s the largest defense presence on the planet.

That $68.5 billion represents direct contracts, personnel spending and grants.

It is not a fully multiplied economic-impact number comparable to agriculture’s $82.3 billion headline.

It does not capture the full downstream effect of Virginia’s defense contractors, shipyards, technology companies, professional-services firms, construction activity, research institutions, suppliers and employee spending.

It also does not include the entire commercial maritime and port economy.

Defense is sometimes dismissed from private-industry comparisons because the federal government is the customer and military personnel are public employees.

That is an overly simplistic distinction.

HII is a private company.

The thousands of manufacturers, engineers, software companies, cybersecurity firms, construction contractors and professional-service providers supporting the defense industrial base are private businesses.

Their customer happens to be the United States government.

Virginia does not stop considering a hospital part of the private economy because Medicare pays a bill. It does not remove a highway contractor from the construction industry because the Virginia Department of Transportation is the customer.

The defense industrial base is a private industrial ecosystem built around public demand.

And Virginia sits at its center.

The Navy has now committed approximately $76.6 billion to General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding for nine Virginia-class attack submarines, five Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarines and supporting shipyard infrastructure.

The agreement is expected to sustain work across the two nuclear shipyards and thousands of suppliers into the 2030s.

Newport News Shipbuilding will perform a significant share of that work.

The shipyard is one of only two in the country capable of building nuclear-powered submarines. It is the only shipyard that designs, builds and refuels nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

Virginia is also home to the world’s largest naval installation, major public and private shipyards, NATO’s only headquarters in North America, a globally significant commercial port, nuclear manufacturers, military commands, logistics operations, aerospace research and a dense network of defense contractors.

This is not a niche regional industry.

It is the Commonwealth’s defining economic and strategic platform.

The submarine investment alone will create demand for welders, engineers, machinists, electricians, nuclear-qualified manufacturers, construction companies, software providers, logistics firms and specialized suppliers.

That demand will not stop at the shipyard gates.

It can reach Lynchburg’s nuclear industry, Northern Virginia’s defense-technology companies, Charlottesville’s research institutions, advanced manufacturers across Southside and Southwest Virginia, and logistics operations throughout the Interstate 64, Interstate 81 and Interstate 95 corridors.

This is precisely how Virginia describes agriculture: as an interconnected statewide ecosystem.

But when the ecosystem is maritime and defense, the state tends to break it into separate bureaucratic categories.

Shipbuilding goes in one box.

The military goes in another.

The port goes somewhere else.

Cybersecurity belongs to Northern Virginia.

Nuclear manufacturing is associated with Lynchburg.

Aerospace is divided among Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and the Eastern Shore.

Advanced manufacturing is treated as a generic statewide priority.

Virginia fragments the industries of the future while combining nearly everything remotely connected to food, fiber and wood into agriculture and forestry.

Then it announces that agriculture won.

This is where the Thomas Jefferson look-alike becomes more than a joke.

Virginia has long struggled with the difference between using its history as an asset and allowing history to define its present identity.

There is value in being the home of Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Monroe.

There is value in preserving historic communities, farms, forests and landscapes.

But history cannot be the state’s primary economic-development personality.

Sending a Jefferson impersonator into a corporate recruitment meeting would communicate exactly the wrong attributes.

It would suggest that Virginia is ceremonial rather than commercial.

Traditional rather than innovative.

Slow rather than urgent.

Proud of what it was rather than clear about what it intends to become.

Calling agriculture the Commonwealth’s largest private industry in 2026 creates the same problem.

It may be technically supportable within the boundaries of a commissioned economic-impact study.

But as a message to the world, it places Virginia’s economic identity in a tricorn hat.

The industries shaping global competition are artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, nuclear energy, aerospace, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, biotechnology, logistics and defense production.

Virginia possesses major advantages in nearly all of them.

Yet the Commonwealth continues introducing itself through an agrarian hierarchy that could have been written decades ago.

That is not respect for history.

It is a failure of imagination.

Farmers and foresters deserve support.

They face commodity volatility, extreme weather, land pressure, labor shortages, succession challenges, trade disruptions and rising operating costs. Virginia’s average farmer is 59.2 years old, and the Commonwealth has approximately 39,000 farms covering 7.3 million acres.

A serious Farm and Forest Prosperity Plan is justified.

The question is not whether agriculture deserves a strategy.

The question is why maritime and defense do not receive a comparably unified, visible and urgent statewide strategy proportionate to their scale.

Where is the Commonwealth’s plan to capture the full economic impact of the submarine buildout?

Where is the statewide recruitment strategy for nuclear shipbuilding suppliers?

Where is the coordinated inventory of industrial land, waterfront capacity, power, water, rail and transportation infrastructure required by the maritime industrial base?

Where is the program helping small Virginia manufacturers buy equipment, obtain certifications, meet cybersecurity requirements and enter defense supply chains?

Where is the strategy connecting Hampton Roads’ demand with manufacturers in Lynchburg, Danville, Martinsville, Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley?

Where is the statewide plan to make Virginia the American headquarters for AUKUS-related industrial cooperation?

Virginia should help farmers become more profitable.

It should help foresters access new markets.

It should preserve working lands.

None of that requires pretending agriculture and forestry sit at the top of an objective private-industry ranking.

The title does not help a farmer buy land.

It does not lower fertilizer costs.

It does not open a processing facility.

It does not resolve succession issues.

It mainly gives politicians a familiar line for speeches.

Virginia should stop declaring any industry number one, number two or number three until it produces an apples-to-apples comparison of the Commonwealth’s major economic clusters.

That analysis should use the same year, geographic assumptions, definitions and multiplier methodology.

It should clearly separate direct employment from indirect and induced employment.

It should distinguish gross output from value added.

It should identify overlaps among industries.

It should examine wages, exports, productivity, capital investment, growth potential, supply-chain depth and strategic importance.

Agriculture may remain one of Virginia’s largest clusters under that analysis.

Maritime commerce may come out on top by output.

Defense may dominate direct spending, wages and strategic significance.

Technology or health care may lead under other measures.

That would be useful information.

What Virginia currently offers is something different: a preferred political narrative supported by a study designed to measure one sector’s broadest possible reach.

It is marketing, not a neutral industrial ranking.

Virginia’s agricultural history is real.

Its forests are important.

But the Commonwealth’s future is being built in shipyards, laboratories, ports, manufacturing plants, data facilities, nuclear operations and secure technology campuses.

It is being built by welders and engineers.

By machinists and software developers.

By shipbuilders, scientists, logistics professionals and advanced manufacturers.

It is being built through nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, space technology and the infrastructure required to support them.

Virginia can continue presenting itself as a state of farms, forests and Founding Fathers.

Or it can tell the world what it has actually become.

Agriculture is one of Virginia’s most historically important industries.

Maritime and defense are the Commonwealth’s dominant economic and strategic platform.

It is time to put away the tricorn hat and build an economic identity equal to the opportunity in front of us.

Subscribe @ theledgerstar.com

The Ledger Star is an independent digital publication covering the people, decisions, investments, and ideas shaping the future of Hampton Roads. It focuses on what matters most to the region's business, civic, and community leaders, providing context and analysis rather than chasing every headline.