Eighty-Three-Year-Old Dedicated to Helping Raise, Sell Tobacco in Wisconsin

Source from:  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  09/21/2004

George Nettum has a keen memory, which is good because the past lays over his life's work like a shadow. At 83, he's still on the job at 7:30 a.m., still riding the country roads in an aging minivan heaped with papers and cardboard boxes, still going strong. You can't say the same for his chosen crop. For 50 years, Nettum has dedicated himself to helping southwestern Wisconsin farmers raise, harvest and sell tobacco. It's been a slowly fading business. He has put in decades tramping through fields, inspecting leaves hanging in drying sheds, wrangling prices with buyers and jawboning public officials. There may not be anyone in Wisconsin who knows more about tobacco than Nettum. "George," said Vernon County agriculture agent Tim Rehbein, "is Mr. Tobacco." Sixty years ago, the labor-intensive, high-value cash crop spread over nearly 30,000 acres of Wisconsin. Today, that total has shrunk by more than 90 percent, with tobacco -- Wisconsin's output is used for chewing -- confined to two small regions. One is primarily in Dane and Rock Counties; the other is centered here, among the valleys and ridges of Vernon County. Nettum grew up in the former area. He has spent most of his life working in the latter. He's general manager of the Northern Wisconsin Cooperative Tobacco Pool, which represents the interests of the roughly 300 growers in Vernon and nearby counties. All told, growers in the region planted not quite 400 acres of tobacco this year -- less than the area in two average-sized Wisconsin farms. "At one time we had 6,000 acres, you know," Nettum said. "And now we've got 400. Yeah, it's a big difference all right." That's clear standing in the silent halls of the pool's century-old warehouse here, which hasn't been used to store tobacco since 1995, or in roaming the countryside with Nettum and listening to his running commentary on what used to be: "This farm that you see up on the left was a big tobacco farm. Nothing left anymore. They tore the sheds down." "See that shed over there? That's empty." "Now the fellow that owns this farm, he doesn't raise tobacco any more." Nettum takes all this in stride. If he's sentimental about the past, he doesn't betray it. He's matter-of-fact about the reasons behind tobacco's decline -- decreasing use because of health concerns; a rising tide of imports; and shrinking acreage allotments, a mechanism used by the government to prevent price-cutting overproduction. "We're trying to stay in the business as best we can," he said. In this region, anyway, it's a business Nettum helped build. He came here in 1954 as an agricultural agent specializing in tobacco for the University of Wisconsin Extension. Three years later, he took over management of the pool, a cooperative organization unifying growers in price negotiations with tobacco buyers. Nettum said that when he started, about a third of the region's growers belonged to the pool. Today, he said, all do. They've benefited both from Nettum's knowledge and his bargaining skills, said Shirley Hooverson, a grower near Liberty Pole. "Nobody ever has or ever will know as much as George does about tobacco and growing the plant," Hooverson said, "and he has been very helpful on raising tobacco and very helpful on getting the price up." Said Rehbein, "George can be very creative in trying to make sure he gets the extra penny for the grower." Nettum is cagey in discussing such things. He worries repeatedly that he's giving away trade secrets, but actually reveals little about his bargaining technique beyond saying that he relies on touch and relationships. "You've got to have a feel for how far you can go with the price," he said. "Otherwise, it's all friendship." Despite health concerns associated with tobacco, Nettum doesn't apologize for his career. Tobacco helped put him through college and pay for his father's farm. The crop has been a part of his life since childhood. One of his prized possessions is a rare, 70-year-old pouch of chewing tobacco produced by the Northern Wisconsin Cooperative and given to his father during the Great Depression in payment for a haircut. Nettum has had it since he was a boy. The pouch is among at least 50 other brands -- names like Red Horse, Big Kick, Union Workman and Taylor's Pride -- that Nettum has collected and keeps in his office. The place is a jumble of papers and magazines; fermenting tobacco leaves ("I just love the smell of it"); a 1980 proclamation from Gov. Lee Dreyfus declaring "Pride in Tobacco Days;" and a pen-and-ink portrait of Nettum, presented to him by the R.J. Reynolds company as "A True Friend of Tobacco." Friend he may be, but Nettum is no longer a user. He smoked -- Camels, Chesterfields, Pall Malls -- from college days until his first grandchild was born more than 20 years ago, then quit for health reasons. He's glad that none of his grandchildren smoke. He once chewed too, but not for long. "My wife thought that was a bad thing to do," Nettum said. "She didn't like it very well at all. Just the spitting and having that stuff around." But while he may not be a buyer at the convenience store, Nettum remains committed to helping the remaining tobacco growers raise their crop and getting it sold at the best price he can secure. And though production is a fraction of what it once was, it has risen a bit in recent years. "We thought that it was going to be gone completely," Nettum said, "but there's an interest now." Enough, anyway, to keep him busy. Officially, he works part time. In reality, he's on the job six days a week, sometimes not stopping until evening. He has no plans to quit. "I like it," he said. "That's my problem. If I hated what I was doing I'd have been long gone." Enditem