A Harvest of Change

Source from:  By Philip Rucker Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, February 24, 2007 02/27/2007

For the Few Tobacco Growers Left in Southern Maryland, Staying Afloat Means Adapting to a New Market -- and Its Name Is Burley David Cox's callused palms and stubby fingers have turned black. The air is cold, and the floor of the cinder-block-walled room is covered with flakes of tobacco leaves that crunch when he walks about. There he is, sitting in the corner, stripping leaves off stalks of tobacco. It is a monotonous chore, stripping tobacco, stalk by stalk -- 210,000 of them this season, the Southern Maryland farmer estimated. It also is a rare sight. The Maryland tobacco buyout seven years ago nearly wiped out the state's tobacco production. It has declined so sharply that for the first March since 1939, there will be no tobacco auction in Hughesville. There are simply not enough people producing the plant to attract buyers. Yet there are about 100 holdouts who, like Cox, are still raising tobacco in Southern Maryland. Unlike Cox, the vast majority are Amish and did not participate in the state buyout because they do not believe in accepting government subsidies. With the market for Maryland tobacco all but gone, the remaining growers have contracted with Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette manufacturer, to raise a different crop: burley tobacco, a plant common in Kentucky and Tennessee but new to Maryland. Compared with Maryland tobacco, burley leaves are thicker and have a lighter color, and their stalks are about a foot taller. Next week, farmers such as Cox are sending the season's last bales of burley to a buying station in New Holland, Pa. -- in Pennsylvania Dutch country, the heart of the nation's Amish population. From there, the tobacco will be transported to Philip Morris's cigarette factories. "You've got the history of tobacco right here," Cox, 47, said, showing off his wooden tobacco barn in Prince Frederick that dates back more than 150 years. Cox said he did not take the state buyout because he reasoned that he could make more money by continuing to grow tobacco. For Cox, tobacco is a way of life, as it has been for at least five generations of Coxes before him. There was a time when tobacco farming defined Southern Maryland -- its culture, its economy, its landscape. The tobacco auction was held in Hughesville every March. Farmers would unload bundles of leaves from their pickups, buyers would feel them for texture and moisture, and auctioneers would scout for the winks and nods that sealed the deal. But Maryland's production has declined remarkably. In 1946, about 46 million pounds of tobacco were sold at the Hughesville auction, according to statistics kept by Dave Conrad, a tobacco specialist at the University of Maryland. By 1983, that figure dropped to 37 million. By 1999, one year before the state buyout, just 9 million. Last year, a mere 300,000 pounds. The few cigarette- and cigarmakers that bought Maryland tobacco, most of them European, are looking elsewhere, mainly Brazil, to satisfy their demand. "It's a tremendous transition for Southern Maryland," said Earl F. "Buddy" Hance, a fourth-generation farmer and deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Agriculture. "With the advent of the buyout, the major companies saw a possible breakthrough where they could get some burley grown in Maryland," Bowling said. Haver said the company is pleased with the growth of burley in Maryland. "Anybody who grows tobacco down there, it's all burley -- and it's all going to Philip Morris," she said. Some farmers said raising the crop under contract is easier. Melinda Fisher, 52, grows tobacco with her family on their Mechanicsville property. She said rates at the annual auction tended to be a tossup. With the Philip Morris contract, pricing is more secure. "We like it better," Fisher, who is Amish, said as she stripped tobacco in their red barn with three of her children, Ruth, 18, Naomi, 17, and John, 10. Another Amish farmer, Israel Fisher, 56, who raises burley on a neighboring property, agreed that "it's better without the auction." "Up there at the auction, sometimes the tobacco that didn't grow so big, we [wouldn't] get much money for it," he added. "But this tobacco, if it's graded right, it sells." But growing tobacco is a hard life, Cox explained, sitting on a footrest and tearing leaves in his lap at a breakneck pace. He stained his hands and dropped flakes of tobacco on his blue jeans, burgundy hoodie and brown boots. In the winter, during stripping season, Cox said he spends nearly every waking hour -- from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. -- in the small stripping room. "I hope you don't mind dust and nicotine, because you'll get an awful lot of it in here," the deep-voiced Cox warned, only half-joking. "I don't smoke. I get my nicotine from this. I get my fix right here." Enditem