The tires on his four-wheel drive pickup truck began to spin as Hal Swaney pulled two wagons loaded with tobacco toward an aging barn. Tobacco harvest was a wet, muddy affair this year in northwest Missouri. Swaney said trucks, wagons, and tractors all had been stuck in the mud at some point, slowing down the harvest.
Missouri tobacco farmers produce over 3 million pounds of burley tobacco every year on around 1,500 acres. Most of that acreage is in northwest Missouri in Platte and Buchanan counties.
Swaney, who harvested 200 acres of tobacco in Platte County this year, began growing tobacco in 1971 when he came home from the Army.
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"I came home and wanted to farm," Swaney said. "My dad said 'You don't have anything, but it does not take anything but foolish hard work to raise tobacco. I suggest you start with a tobacco crop.'"
Changes
A lot has changed in the tobacco industry since 1971. Swaney started small, building his acreage by buying or renting quota allotments from other farmers.
"As allotments began to shrink, they became more expensive," Swaney said.
Basically, they had artificially driven up the price of tobacco, which hurt their ability to sell tobacco. Swaney said the price was high but all the extra money went back to whoever owned the quota. Just like we see today with high corn prices and high land prices, the cost of renting land goes up, too.
In 2004 the federal government, with the support of large tobacco companies, got out of the tobacco business with a $10.4 billion buyout program. That year the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Program was passed by Congress, which eliminated tobacco quotas and price support programs. The tobacco support program had been in place since 1938 when Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act. This program allowed the secretary of agriculture to set production quotas and assigned allotted acreages for tobacco production.
After the quota system was eliminated, each farmer was allowed to produce on his own, as he was able.
"That is when we started increasing our acreage," Swaney said. "We were always increasing and decreasing with the quota system but, when they did away with that system, we went on more of a rapid expansion."
Mobile receiving station
In 1971, Swaney and the other tobacco farmers sold their tobacco through an auction in Weston, Mo. Today, Swaney direct contracts his crop to Philip Morris USA. Until three years ago, Swaney paid to have his tobacco shipped to storage and processing facilities in Kentucky. Now the industry has developed mobile receiving stations that move around the country grading and buying tobacco. In Missouri, the mobile receiving station stops at the New Deal Warehouse in Weston, Mo.
"They did not raise the price we were paid for tobacco but they did take away the trucking expense," Swaney said. "My price has not changed much over the last six years."
The trouble with the mobile receiving station, according to Swaney, is that it is only here for a certain window of time and then it moves to another location. Phillip Morris wants to stagger the receiving of tobacco because they cannot handle it all at one time.
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Tobacco leafs
"When we start stripping tobacco, we would like to just send it to them but, just like a grain elevator, they cannot take it all on the same day," Swaney said.
Wet weather this fall spread harvest out over several weeks. While Swaney was still picking up tobacco from the fields and hanging it in barns, he had other tobacco that had been hanging in barns for nearly six weeks and was about ready to be stripped and baled. When the tobacco is ready for harvest, the entire plant is cut and placed on long wooden sticks. It will stay in the field like that for three days before it is loaded on wagons and hauled to a tobacco barn. The sticks of tobacco are hung in the barn to dry for up to six weeks. Finally, leafs are stripped from the stalks and combined into 550 pound bales. This is a change from the old days when tobacco was hand-tied into bundles.
Tobacco leafs are sorted according to their position on the stalk. Swaney said the bottom leafs are called the trash. These are fine, lightweight leafs that keep a cigarette burning evenly. Middle leafs are used for filler and the tips give cigarettes their true flavor.
"All of the different levels have different flavors and aroma," Swaney said.
Before filtered cigarettes came along, the tips were just thrown away.
"The plant itself has changed over the years," Swaney said. "Today we don't grow tips like the companies want. They want tips like the old-timers threw away but we can't grow them."
Tobacco plants today have a top leaf that is too long and too big. The companies want a shorter, dark leaf for the top. Swaney grows varieties that are bred for resistance to dark shank and blue mold.
The University of Kentucky is the leader in tobacco research but companies do a lot of their own research. Company-funded research is focused on what they can do with the end product.
Future
The future of tobacco farming in Missouri is uncertain. In 1954, there were 512,000 tobacco farms in the U.S. By 2002 there were only 56,000 tobacco farms. That same year there were 338 tobacco farms in Missouri. A number that has gone down as the price for corn and soybeans has gone up.
"At first we thought the tobacco companies wanted to spread out their risk with production in Missouri, Minnesota and Indiana," Swaney said. "Now they have had a change in management and they think it might be cheaper for them to concentrate their production in one area."
Swaney is not sure about the long-term prospects for tobacco in Missouri but he thinks it will be around for as long as he wants to grow the crop.
"If I was 30 years old and wanted to grow tobacco for another 40 years, I am not sure you could count on that or not."
As Swaney headed back to the field with an empty wagon, his phone rang. One of his crew was stuck in the mud and needed a bigger tractor to pull him out--it was a long harvest season. Enditem
