Auction's Days are Numbered: Growers

Source from:  Monte Sonnenberg TIMES-REFORMER Tuesday October 16, 2007 10/17/2007

Tobacco farmers are bracing for the likelihood that this will be the last year they sell at the Delhi Auction Exchange. "The writing is on the wall," Chuck Emre of Lynnville, manager of the exchange, said yesterday. "It looks that way because of the crop size. We just can't do this at the fee farmers are charged anymore to market their crop." The decline of tobacco farming has been so rapid in recent years that it is practically in free fall. The crop fell from 55.6 million pounds in 2006 - itself a historic low - to 32 million pounds this year. The auction exchange was forced to trim its payroll accordingly. Nearly 140 people worked there last year. This year, the payroll has dropped to 67. "Even then, the exchange is too expensive to operate with your fixed costs; your heat, your hydro," Emre added. Rick Cerna of Aylmer, a director of the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board, remembers when auction houses operated in Aylmer and Tillsonburg as well as Delhi. In the 1960s and 1970s, growers would sell 2.4 million pounds of leaf a day. In this auction season, the board is aiming to move 400,000 pounds a day. Despite the crop's size, it is expected to take an unusually long time to sell it. The board has budgeted 80 days for this purpose. Tobacco farmers agree the annual auction will end if Ottawa and Queen's Park present growers with an exit package. Since last fall, the marketing board has been seeking a buyout of 271-million pounds of quota. The board is asking $2.62 a pound for 1,559 quota holders. If approved, the buyout would be worth $710 million. Richard VanMaele of Delhi, vice-chair of the tobacco board, said the need for a buyout has become "desperate." The average tobacco farm, he said, is not viable growing tobacco on such a reduced scale. "You can feel it here - the need for a buyout," VanMaele said. "Farmers have done a good job of holding it together for as long as they have. These are difficult, trying times." Jon Lechowicz of Burford knows the difficulty of working with a reduced acreage. His family has been farming tobacco since 1930. The Lechowiczes have grown as much as 150 acres in one season. More typical in recent years is 60 acres or so. This year, Lechowicz planted 30 acres. "A lot of people are thinking this is the last time selling tobacco here," he said yesterday. "Or at least selling tobacco this way. To a man, you can say that everyone feels they're entitled to some compensation for what the province and federal governments have done to their families. Governments are the biggest stakeholders in this business yet they have the least amount of investment. They haven't been forthright with us." Lechowicz noted that Haldimand-Norfolk MP Diane Finley, minister of citizenship and immigration in the Harper cabinet, is the senior MP from the tobacco belt. Lechowicz said the fact Finley has said nothing new about tobacco in the past six months speaks volumes of where the tobacco board stands in its negotiations. "She should be held accountable for that," Lechowicz said. Enditem