Southern Ohio Tobacco Farmers Hopeful for Federal Buyout Bill

Source from:  The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio  07/20/2004

In his heyday, Bill Faught grew 150,000 pounds of tobacco a year on his Brown County farm. Then demand for the crop fell. The government imposed a quota system limiting how much farmers could grow. And Faught, 58, felt he was too old for the manual labor. His tobacco crop dropped to 7,000 pounds. "It was the government. And it was my own doing. Tobacco farming requires 900 man-hours per acre. It's not like it used to be," he said. Now Faught and other tobacco farmers in southern Ohio hope the federal government will buy the rest of their crops. The Senate on Thursday passed a tobacco bill that calls for a $12 billion buyout program to encourage farmers to stop growing the crop. The bill awaits action by the House. Legislators have been debating some sort of a buyout for years. As demand dropped and regulations on tobacco grew, farmers were able to raise less and less of the crop. The tobacco industry operates under a quota and price-support system that has been around since the Great Depression. In the past decade, the quotas have dropped dramatically, leaving farmers in financial trouble. In Brown County, tobacco production fell to 2.8 million pounds in 2000 from 7.96 million pounds in 1997, according to the Brown County extension office. The buyout would pay farmers for the amount they are allowed to grow under the quota system. The money would come from tobacco companies and importers. Farmers in Adams and Brown counties, where much of Ohio's tobacco is grown, embraced the idea, even though they doubt they'll find a crop that is as profitable as tobacco. "We'll never be able to fully recover," said Todd Raines, whose family grows 85,000 pounds of tobacco. "But it's the uncertainty of it that people are ready to put behind them. You never know what's going to happen from one year to the next." The Raines family already has opened a greenhouse and is raising livestock to offset the failing tobacco business. The dying tobacco industry is hard for some people in the Ohio River counties to face. There, the crop has been an important part of the heritage and history of the area. Ripley, a community in southern Brown County, has a tobacco museum and holds a tobacco festival every year. Raines said the best part of the bill is that it appears to eliminate the quota and price-support system. His family spends $40,000 a year leasing quotas from other people because the government does not allow them to grow enough tobacco to make a living. "After this, I could grow 100 pounds or 100,000 pounds," he said. Guy Roberts disagreed. He is on the board of directors of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association, which runs Ohio's price-support program. He worries about ending price controls. "Farmers could get 15 cents a pound for tobacco. You just don't know," he said. Faught acknowledged there aren't many crops that have the price-support and marketing system found in the tobacco industry. But he said there is no other way to help struggling farmers. "To me, it's worth it just to get all the regulations out of it," he said. In a rare move, tobacco farmers are on the same side as health organizations in hoping the buyout passes. The other part of the bill provides for regulation of cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco by the Food and Drug Administration. Groups that oppose smoking, including the American Cancer Society, have been pushing for this regulation for years. Shelly Kiser, program manager for Tobacco Free Ohio, said the unusual alliance has helped get the bill this far. Her organization supports the FDA regulation of tobacco. "It's way past due for this type of thing to happen," she said. Enditem