Buyout Didn't Kill Tobacco Farming: More Acres in State Being Harvested Now, But by Fewer Farmers

Source from:  RALEIGH, Nov 11, 2007 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Informati 11/12/2007

When Congress approved the buyout of the New Deal-era tobacco support program a few years ago, it was one more transformational change in North Carolina's economy. In a state that depended on textiles, tobacco and furniture, jobs were marching away to other places. Textile employment was in steep decline, furniture-making jobs were going to other countries and the buyout would mean a collapse of the old tobacco-growing economy that enabled a lot of farm families to send the kids to college. Things changed, all right, but tobacco didn't go away after the 2004-05 buyout. It has made a comeback. "Since the buyout we have actually increased our acreage in North Carolina," says state Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler. "A lot of people have expanded their operations." That doesn't mean that tobacco is at an all-time high. Far from it, in fact. Statistics on the agriculture department's Web site indicate that 164,000 acres of tobacco were harvested this year, well down from the 313,000 acres harvested a decade ago. But the 164,000 acres in 2007 represent a significant increase since the buyout when 123,000 acres were harvested. The stats also show tobacco yield per acre is going back up after several years of decline, and overall production is up. But with the increase in tobacco comes this change: There are fewer farms and fewer farmers -- perhaps half the 10,000 pre-buyout number. Those who remain are running bigger operations. "At the time of the buyout, there were a lot of economics at play pressuring people to get out of the business," Troxler says. Older farmers took the buyout of their rights to grow tobacco under the old quota-and-allotment system and retired. Others used the money to buy new equipment to take advantage of mechanization, especially in the curing process that makes North Carolina's flue-cured tobacco distinctive. Those farmers are rediscovering what they knew all along, Troxler says: There must be economies of scale to make it in the post-tobacco support program economy. Small tobacco farmers may still be in the business and growing tobacco on contracts from tobacco buyers, but it's the big farms that can take advantage of economies of scale. They have to, Troxler says, because of outside pressures. While the buyout took certain costs out of the process -- such as the fees farmers paid in recent years to finance the price support program, as well as the costs of quotas rented from other owners -- there are new concerns. The price of fuel to run tractors and to heat tobacco barns during the curing process is up significantly. It's a long way from Troxler's boyhood when he helped his grandfather in Guilford County keep the wood fires going in his tobacco barns. Nowadays, farmers are likely to use computers to control temperatures in bulk curing barns. Troxler is one of the tobacco farmers who got out of the business, though not because of the buyout. He found after becoming commissioner that he wasn't going to be home enough to grow tobacco. It's a labor-intensive process that requires a lot of attention, he says. When Troxler started farming, his 25 to 30 acres of tobacco would support his young family. Later he was growing 130 acres -- "about what it took for our family to have some disposable income and educate the kids." But the small tobacco farm that once dominated the rural landscape has gone the way of those textile factories and furniture plants. "Tobacco probably educated more rural kids in North Carolina than any other commodity on the farm," Troxler says. And growing tobacco, he laughs, gave a lot of those kids another incentive. "When you've been cropping tobacco since you were little and worked on the farm all through your teenage years, you're gonna think, 'Man, I've got to get an education and find an easier way to make a living.' " Enditem