Southwest Virginia

It wasn’t that long ago that one of every three people in this country were farmers. But over the last century small farming has been almost entirely replaced by agri-business, land development and better paying jobs in practically every other industry. Farmer, activist, and educator Charlie Thompson grew up in southwest Virginia amid a disappearing landscape of family farms.

His new book is called, GOING OVER HOME, A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land.

Southwest Virginia has seen the ravages of the opioid epidemic.  It hit just as the coal industry took a nosedive.

Now, a new federal program is aimed at both of those problems.

Loudoun County has the world’s largest concentration of data centers. But what about Southwest Virginia?

One new economic development effort hopes to bring data centers to coal country.

People seeking lawful asylum in this country face overwhelming obstacles.  Nonetheless, they choose to come here.  But that’s far from the end of their journey. Sponsored by family or friends, many travel hundreds of miles by bus to join them all over the country. 

In Roanoke, where they change buses, tired, often hungry and frightened, two women are there to greet them at the station and to remind them that people here care about them.          

The first comprehensive study on the effect of invasive plants on indigenous wildlife is sobering.

Researchers at Virginia Tech have confirmed that when invasive plants take over an area, they actually alter the ecosystem and deplete the native animals’ natural food sources.  It’s a major driver of wildlife extinction, the researchers say. And it’s even worse than they thought.