Tobacco Growers Fear Trade Deal to Harm Exports

Source from:  Nashua Telegraph 03/05/2012

WASHINGTON - Southern tobacco farmers fear that they could lose a significant portion of their export business if health advocates win a battle to carve tobacco out of a major trade agreement that's being negotiated with eight countries on the Pacific Rim. The American Medical Association and several other health groups insist that the Obama administration put public health priorities ahead of commercial interests. But with the majority of their crop now being sold overseas, tobacco growers in North Carolina, Kentucky and across the Southeast see that pressure as an effort to eliminate their ability to make a living on a commodity that's sold legally in the United States and around the world. President Barack Obama hopes that the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement will help double exports eventually. The United States does more than $200 billion in trade with those countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The goal is to boost trade by eliminating taxes and tariffs on exports and imports between the countries. The growers worry that they'll be left out of the special deal, making it more difficult for them to compete with developing nations that already sell tobacco more cheaply. Negotiations are set to resume Thursday in Australia. Last week, Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky joined U.S. trade representatives and several of the partners' ambassadors at a Washington reception that promoted the global agreement. Americans smoke more than a hundred billion fewer cigarettes a year than they did a decade ago. The domestic decline in smokers has forced growers such as John Ashe to look overseas for new markets. Ninety percent of the tobacco that Ashe grows is exported. He runs a farm in Reidsville, N.C., north of Greensboro, with 14 cows, 100 acres of soybeans and wheat, and 84 acres of tobacco. It's the tobacco that keeps him afloat, he said. "Tobacco generates more income," said Ashe, who's 44. "I couldn't make it off 100 acres of wheat. I just couldn't make it off 100 acres of soybean. The equipment that I use for my tobacco farm, some of those things I can use to grow wheat and use to grow soybeans, use to grow hay for cows" It's not only tobacco growers who would be affected by being left out of the trade deal. Erica Peterson, the executive vice president of the North Carolina Agribusiness Council, said tobacco farmers in North Carolina were a major economic engine in the state's $70 billion agribusiness industry. "There is the fertilizer, the pesticide," she said. "There is the dealership that sells the truck to the farmer. … Any of the employees they hire on the farm to payroll, secretary. All these folks are going to be impacted." Responding to growers' worries, more than 50 U.S. senators and representatives - Republicans and Democrats - from the tobacco-growing states of Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee signed letters last fall warning U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk of the dangerous consequences of cutting tobacco from the Pacific Rim agreement. Enditem