John Camp grew up in tobacco.
It's what he knows, and as long as he can continue to make a good profit off of it, it's what he plans to keep doing, the Todd County farmer said.
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"I will always have some tobacco until I get ready to retire," said Camp, who farms 700 acres in south Todd County, 90 of it in tobacco.
Camp said the dark tobacco - he grows both dark-fired and dark air-cured - is "staying pretty good" for his family, although the burley tobacco used for smoking "has really gone out as far as profitability," he added.
He noted that burley tobacco takes more work than corn, for example, and when one can grow an acre of corn with a profit close to that of burley, it makes sense.
"It's just so much easier and cheaper for me to produce an acre of corn, wheat and soybeans," Camp said. "It costs more money to produce the same acre of tobacco than it does an acre of corn."
These days about a third of his tobacco is in burley, another third in dark-fired and the remaining acreage in dark air-cured, although Camp says he's grown as much as 115 acres of tobacco and as little as 75.
He notes that tobacco has gone the way of a lot of other crops; if there's not enough money in one acre, you have to produce several to make your living.
Considering the future of the crop, Camp said he thinks tobacco will continue to be grown here in the next 10 and 20 years, but how much and how profitably is yet to be seen.
Across the state and elsewhere, dark tobacco has a more favorable outlook than burley, given the increase in snuff production and a decline in cigarette consumption.
University of Kentucky faculty Dr. Will Snell said opportunity for the dark tobacco used to make snuff is on the demand side now, while cigarettes are plagued by industry restrictions and concerns for related health issues and teen smoking.
Medical studies say there is a lower health risk with smokeless tobaccos like snuff, Snell said, even as many facilities have been banning smoking indoors. Additionally, effective marketing campaigns for snuff help push that product.
He believes there will be a number of farms that will continue to turn to crops in the future, especially for burley, while he is optimistic about the dark tobaccos like those grown in Todd County and elsewhere in western Kentucky.
Snell said there are more opportunities for dark tobacco historically, and with the given situation, farmers are exiting tobacco because grain and livestock are strong. Additionally, tobacco is tight because of the cost of labor and lower yields, he said.
A member of the faculty for UK's Department of Agricultural Economics, Snell also noted that there is still a lot of research being done in alternative uses for tobacco like pharmaceutical uses and biofuels, but he said he doesn't know if it will be cost effective to use tobacco for other products.
"I just think it's still difficult to say at this point if the market potential is there," he said.
Figures from the National Agricultural Statistics Service say there are 8,800 acres of dark fire-cured tobacco being harvested in the state, 72,000 acres of burley and 4,400 acres of dark air-cured tobacco, according to the 2010 information the service released last June.
In Todd County, there were 910 acres of dark fire-cured tobacco harvested in 2010, 610 acres of burley and 630 acres of dark air-cured, the agency's county estimates indicated.
That amounted to a total 2.77 million pounds of the fire-cured variety in the county, 1.17 million pounds of burley and 1.86 million pounds of air-cured.
Camp's first tobacco crop was dark air-cured. He was an eighth- or ninth-grader at the time, and he recalls raising tobacco alongside his father before stepping out to produce a crop all his own.
"I remember my dad plowing a tobacco (crop) with mules," he noted. "I've been in the tobacco patch a long time."
Todd County farmer John Coots runs his family's farm in Allensville with brothers Mike and James Coots. Together the three siblings farm some 3,000 acres of land that include milk cows, row crops and tobacco.
They own 900 of those acres and farm tobacco on 125.
Coots muses that 125 acres is a good size tobacco farm for Todd County, maybe not that big in other places, but big for the local community, and he says there are probably three or four more tobacco operations in the county just as large.
Coots said he believes the market is pretty bright for tobacco farmers right now.
"Dark-fired is the best as far as returns," Coots observed. "Then air-cured, (and) burley brings up the rear.
"Burley's a tough pill to sell. It's not nearly as profitable as the dark-fired tobacco," he continued.
Coots said he expects to see more larger-acreage growers in the future, tobacco farmers who will be growing more and more of their crops, he explained.
Like Camp, he too grew up raising tobacco, and he began raising it on a larger scale when the migrant workers came about 16 years ago.
He considers the future of his farm and the family's involvement with it, and notes that there are several young boys around the farm, and they're learning, he said.
"We want them to have that opportunity (to farm)," he said of younger family members. "But my sons and daughters are going to have to go get an education and then come back and see if they want to farm.
"They may or may not want to tobacco farm, but I think the future is pretty good." Enditem
