Coyner, Gray
Agricultural Liaison
Fauquier County Staff
540-592-3320 Office and Fax
(540) 219-9485 Cell
gcoyner[at]pecva.org
"The preservation of agriculture and forestry is critical to the preservation of open lands. There will never be enough public money to buy and maintain the open lands we need for our food security. We must maintain a critical mass of farms and farmers to support the agribusiness infrastructure that supplies farmers and markets agricultural products. If we have to depend on agricultural imports for our food supply, it will make our dependency on foreign oil seem like economic penny ante."
Gray Coyner works as PEC's Agricultural Liaison. He serves as liaison to the farming community in the PEC nine-county area to help build cooperation between the environmental and agricultural communities. He also works as the property manager for Ovoka Farm the PEC property near Paris, VA overseeing the installation of conservation practices along some of the streams and leasing the land grazing. Gray is the PEC representative to the Ag Working Group of the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments, which is helping publicize farmers markets, local suppliers and "Buy Local" campaigns in the metro area. Before coming to PEC, Gray was a cattle producer in Fauquier County. He last worked with Fleetwood Farm in the Delaplane area. He serves as a publicly elected director of the John Marshall Soil and Water Conservation District and is a member of the Fauquier County Excellence in Education Committee. Gray is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Virginia Farm Bureau representing Culpeper, Fairfax, Fauquier, King George, Madison, Orange, Prince William, Spotsylvania and Stafford counties. He currently serves as chairman of the VFBF Livestock and Natural and Environmental Resources advisory committees and is serving on the advisory committee for the Virginia Governor's School for Agriculture. He is a former president of the Fauquier County Farm Bureau and previously served on the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Land Use Committee. Gray is a 1970 Virginia Tech graduate holds a bachelor's degree in animal science.
