State's Tobacco Industry Dying

Source from:  By Ted Shelsby Sun Staff 03/21/2005

For nearly 370 years, tobacco has been more than a crop in Southern Maryland. It has been a way of life. The first European settlers to the region saw the potential of the crop shortly after their ships - the Ark and the Dove - landed at St. Clements Island in 1634. They developed a thriving economy around supplying the Old Country's growing demand for smokes. Tobacco was used as currency. The town preacher was paid in tobacco. Tobacco farmers could order a bride from England for 120 pounds of the dried leaf. Twelve pounds would get you a metal-bladed plow. Type 32, as the leaf grown in Maryland is technically called, was the backbone of the region's economy well into the late 1900s. That's no longer the case. A crop that pumped an inflation-adjusted $96.5 million into the area economy in 1982, when it was still referred to as "the industry" of the region, has nearly disappeared. In 1982, 38.3 million pounds of tobacco went to auction, but last year's harvest, which is currently being sold at auction, will barely top 1 million pounds. The crop has gotten so small in Maryland that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's farm statistic service no longer tracks and records its production. Nobody is saying when it will all end. "I'd say it is not going to be much longer," an angry Sylvester L. Brady Jr. said one day last week after returning from the auction house where he had tobacco on the floor. "It was the saddest thing I've seen in all my life," the 32-year-old Calvert County farmer said of the $1.10 a pound buyers were willing to pay for what is considered a good-quality crop of tobacco. "These prices are going to kill whatever is left of the industry," said Brady. "You can't grow it at that price." When asked about the outlook for what is considered one of Maryland's oldest industries, David L. Conrad thought for a second or two and said: "We will have to see what happens after this year. Farmers are not happy. There has been a lot of discussion around the warehouses about getting out." Conrad is the extension regional tobacco specialist at the University of Maryland's Central Maryland Research and Education Center in Upper Marlboro. The facility was previously called the school's tobacco experimental farm. "Prices are not good this year," Conrad said. He said buyers for European tobacco companies paid $1.70 and $1.80 a pound for tobacco when the auction opened Monday, but the price dropped sharply by the end of week. He said that was due in part to the absence of the big U.S. tobacco companies - R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson. "We need Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to buy what the Swiss don't take," said Brady. "But they tell us we have such a small amount of tobacco anymore that it is not worth them coming up here for it." A state program has had more to do with the sharp decline of tobacco farming in Southern Maryland than low prices. In 2000, Gov. Parris N. Glendening offered a tobacco buyout program that paid farmers to quit growing tobacco; 877 farmers took the money. Conrad estimates that about 125 tobacco growers remain in the state. "And about 90 percent of them are Amish or Mennonite," he said. "They don't participate in government programs." Program gives incentive to protect water quality In a step designed to protect the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, the state and the federal government have reached an agreement on a plan that pays farmers to reduce pollution runoff from their land. Signup for the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, commonly referred to as CREP, began last week and will continue until Dec. 31, 2007, or until 100,000 acres are enrolled. CREP is a voluntary initiative that pays landowners to take environmentally sensitive cropland out of production for 10 to 15 years and plant vegetative buffers, create wildlife habitat or establish wetlands to protect local streams from pollution runoff. Eligible landowners receive annual rental incentive payments of $50 to $200 an acre and a one-time signing bonus of up to $150 an acre to participate in the program. Enditem