Group Wants Tobacco Buyout Deadline Extended for Black Farmers

Source from:  By STEVE HARTSOE Associated Press Writer RALEIGH, N.C.  06/17/2005

A group representing black farmers wants officials to extend Friday's deadline to sign up for 2005 tobacco buyout payments, saying a lack of outreach resulted in only about 60 percent participation among eligible minorities. "We're asking them to extend the deadline to allow us to get these other 40 percent signed up into the tobacco buyout," said John Boyd of Baskerville, Va. He is president of the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd said about 60 percent of some 3,700 eligible growers and quota holders have signed up, blaming the low turnout on the need for more outreach. His group held a meeting in Raleigh last month, but said they need to hold another four meetings. He planned to meet with officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday to request at least 30 additional days. "We've been pressing them to do more outreach to black farmers," he said of the USDA. "A lot of these people are older and have a tough time traveling." Federal regulations only allow an extension if U.S. Farm Services Agency officials weren't able to process a registration, perhaps because of workload, officials said. But that extension only applies to eligible recipients who try to sign up before the Friday deadline, said Misty Jones, a spokeswoman for the tobacco division of the FSA in Washington. Federal officials said reaching minority farmers has been part of an overall difficulty in getting the word out to eligible recipients for various reasons. "We've left no stone unturned to seek out not only minority farmers but all farmers to make sure everybody was properly informed," said Keith Weatherly, director of the federal Farm Services Agency in Raleigh. "That is just a small group of folks, minorities and others, that just are hard to reach. They don't live in the tobacco region now and there are some that have an ownership dispute." Officials have said they've advertised, put up posters, passed out brochures, and held meetings across the country to educate people about the buyout. "USDA ... made special efforts to reach out to small and minority-owned producers," John "Moot" Truluck, head of the tobacco division at the federal Farm Services Agency, told a meeting of tobacco farmers last week. Some 80,000 North Carolina farmers and landowners are expected to sign up for buyout payments by Friday's deadline. Officials estimated that about 90 percent of them had signed up as of late last week. Under the buyout legislation that Congress approved and President Bush signed in October, quota owners will get $7 a pound for their 2002 quota, the government-issued license to grow tobacco that controlled the supply of leaf from the 1930s until this year. Growers will get $3 a pound based on the amount of tobacco they grew in 2002, 2003 and 2004. About $3.9 billion is available for those eligible in North Carolina, the nation's largest tobacco-producing state. Enditem