04/22/08 Director Loveland retiring

Washington Ag April 22, 2008 Valoria Loveland is hanging up the reins as Director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, saddling up with some real horse reins, and grabbing the fishing rods. Governor Gregoire announced yesterday that Loveland will retire effective May 5th. The Director, who was reappointed to her position by Gregoire in April of 2005, says she has been thinking about retiring for some time and the timing right now works good for her and her family. As to accomplishments under her tenure, Loveland says a lot of people get to take credit. Loveland: "But you know agriculture is going quite well. Our exports are doing quite well. The fact that people are connecting with producers of food, those are the kinds of things I think are very positive for agriculture. The agency and myself have worked very hard along with the governor to make sure that we start drawing these connections to the importance of agriculture to the state." And Loveland's advice to a permanent successor would be keep on working for Washington's farmers and ranchers because we take them for granted way too often. She sees preserving the state's farmland as a major challenge for the future. The governor has announced current WSDA deputy director Bob Gore will the agency's interim director until a permanent director is hired. I'm Bob Hoff.