Today Marks the Beginning of an End of an Era for Tobacco

Source from:  Brian Mills News Channel 11 11/16/2004

Today is a bittersweet one for Greene County tobacco farmers. This has been one of their best growing seasons ever, but it's also the last season where prices are set and guaranteed by the government. "It's a free market now and you may sell it and you may not", says Dallas Ottinger, a burley grower from St. James. [img border=0 hspace="4" vspace="4" align="left" src=http://www.tobaccochina.com/english/picture/Satellite.jpg] Which means some farmers who've been getting a set price for more than sixty years could be weighing up their last bales. Agricultural economists estimate seventy five percent of tobacco farmers will leave the business next year. "The tri-cities tobacco farmer is gone, the farms too small, and it's going to take the big grower with volume to make a living", says Dallas Ottinger. Many say they will retire from farming completely, " all the older people's are gone". Most are undecided about their next move, " so I don't know". But at least one farmer welcomes a free market full of uncertainties. " I think it will be all right yes I do", says Jim Crouch, a tobacco farmer in Washington County, TN. And with five hundred acres of land to work, Jim Crouch figures he's going to make as much money on the open market as he would under the old system. " You will wind up with just as much money for your acreage of tobacco this way as you would buying your pounds". The open market will also mean the growers who are left will be forced to grow good tobacco. Gone are the days when companies were forced to buy whatever tobacco was placed on warehouse floors, no matter how poor the quality. " You could sell dirty tobacco wet tobacco", says one Greene County Farmer. Future tobacco growers will be all about quality or the market will chew them up and spit them out. We did some checking on the number of tobacco farms in Tennessee.In 1964 there were more than sixty thousand tobacco growers.That number has unravelled to less than ten thousand. Virginia has just fewer than seventeen thousand tobacco farmers. Enditem