Farmers Prepare to Trash Tobacco

Source from:  Daniel Pearce SIMCOE REFORMER Thursday January 31, 2008 02/01/2008

Starting tonight, growers will throw out tobacco to protest lack of buyout from feds The county has given the OK for bales of tobacco dropped at the side of area roads by protesting farmers to be picked up as garbage -- provided the normal rules of refuse collection are followed. Eric D'Hondt, Norfolk's manager of public works, said there are no environmental issues with taking cured leaf to a landfill site. But there are other restrictions that could force garbage collectors to ignore the bales, he warned. "If the tobacco is in green plastic bags and it's under the weight limit of 40 pounds, yes our contractor will pick them up," D'Hondt told the Reformer, adding he suspects the bales are in the 50-pound range. There's also a six-bag per household limit. Area growers are expected to start bringing tobacco out of barns tonight and depositing them in front of their farms to protest the lack of a government buyout for their rapidly declining industry. The Elgin-Norfolk-Oxford Land Owners Association has called for the action in a symbolic move to show government their crops have been reduced to "garbage," said the group's president John Van Daele. "We're showing (government) we don't make money here. They're the only ones making money," he said, referring to the taxes the province and Ottawa collect from cigarettes. The group is asking farmers to bring out one bale the first night, two the second, three on the third, and so on until "the barns are emptied," said Van Daele, who grows tobacco near Tillsonburg. Questions have been raised whether the discarded leaf won't simply be picked up by the public, especially by residents of the nearby Six Nations reserve, which has a thriving cigarette industry. Van Daele said his group, which recently trucked bales to Six Nations and left them there in another protest, hasn't "made any plans." However, D'Hondt said "recycling entrepreneurs" regularly comb garbage for items they can sell and expects the bales, whatever they weigh, to be gone before the garbage truck can get to them. Growers have been trying for more than two years to get a full buyout of their industry following several years of shrinking crop size. Next year's crop will be about one-seventh of what it was a decade ago. Adrien Jacques, who grows near LaSalette, said he has nothing left to lose and will put all his tobacco out at the road if he has to. "Everything I've worked for for 30 years has gone out the window," Jacques said. "Now I have banks, creditors, everyone on my ass." Jacques, a third generation tobacco farmer, said he's "real close" to losing his farm. His operation was debt free until 2001 when he was "forced" by government to install new kiln burners, he said. Jacques, 52, blames government for allowing cheaper imported tobacco into the country and said billions collected annually in cigarette taxes should be used to buy out remaining farmers. "These governments have destroyed my life, my family," he said. Enditem