Tobacco Growers Finally on Their Own

Source from:  Lynchburg (VA) News & Advance 10/27/2004

With Congressional approval of the tobacco quota buyout earlier this month, lawmakers put the nation's tobacco farmers on their own. And that's where they have belonged for some time. Debated for nearly six years, the buyout ends the Depression-era federal tobacco price-support system and returns farmers to a free market with no production limits. Congressional officials say the buyout will mean as much as $666 million for Virginia quota-holders and tobacco growers over the next decade. The government had sharply cut farmers' tobacco quotas in recent years in the wake of increasing imports of cheaper foreign tobacco and a nationwide decline in smoking. Quotas are licenses dictating how much tobacco a farmer may grow. Tobacco farmers have pushed for an end to the quota system for years. C.D. Bryant III of Pittsylvania County, a grower and activist for tobacco farmers, called the approval and President Bush's signature on the bill "a relief. And I think it will be very helpful in ending a program that started in the 1930s." Senator George Allen, R-Va., praised the buyout as beneficial to the state. "Beyond the quota holders being paid and the tobacco farmers being paid in this buyout, this will make Virginia-grown tobacco much more competitive." He added that the old system had "outlived its usefulness and was actually harming the ability of Virginia and American tobacco growers to compete internationally." That's because the subsidies drove the cost of Virginia and U.S. tobacco much higher than the cost of tobacco grown overseas. The buyout will be funded by payments from tobacco manufacturers and will provide $7 per pound to quota holders and $3 per pound to growers over a 10-year period. Growers can either quit the business (by growing broccoli, for example, or some other crop) or they can try their hand in a free-market system where they compete with growers in either Africa or South America. In sending the buyout plan to the president, the House killed part of the Senate-passed plan that would have given the Food and Drug Administration broad new powers over tobacco manufacturing. That's too bad, given that tobacco has been found hazardous to the health of those who use it. And it never has made much sense for the government to subsidize a crop that the surgeon general has said is hazardous to use. Public health advocates, as well as cigarette maker Philip Morris USA of Richmond, lamented the loss of a chance to enact new federal controls over tobacco, controls that could identify nicotine as a controlled substance. The House-Senate conferees, said Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., "removed the lynchpin in the passage of this legislation in a complete sellout to the tobacco companies." He called it "disgraceful." A new Congress can return to federal controls over tobacco in years to come. For now, the buyout is complete and the government has put the tobacco farmers on their own to compete with international growers. The move has been a long time coming. Enditem