NC Tobacco Farmers To Split $152 Million

Source from:  wfmy.com Raleigh, NC  12/21/2005

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler says the quota payments are a welcome sight at the end of a difficult year for tobacco growers. The $152 million in quota payments to nearly 77,000 North Carolina tobacco growers comes just in time to help them on the heels of a tough year, state Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said. Farmers need the money to help to pay down debt and recover from a year of high fuel costs and bad weather, he said. "It's been a real tight year in terms of squeezing a dollar out," Troxler said. The so-called Phase II payments were designed to offset losses experienced by tobacco farmers and tobacco quota owners as a result of declines in cigarette sales after the $206 billion 1998 settlement between the four major US tobacco companies and 46 states to compensate for smoking-related health claims. Since 1999, North Carolina farmers and quota holders have received more than $837 million from the fund, according to Governor Mike Easley. The final payments to farmers and quota holders was supposed to be made in 2004. But last December, a North Carolina business court judge ruled tobacco companies didn't have to make the final payment because they also had to pay farmers billions in a tobacco quota buyout program approved last year by Congress. The North Carolina Supreme Court overturned Judge Ben Tennille's ruling in August, and the judge told tobacco lawyers in October that he intended to release that money. Farmers have used the settlement money to pay off debts for equipment, tobacco barns, land and quota rentals, said Larry Wooten, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau. Some farmers might even plant more tobacco, gambling they can successfully compete in a free-market world without quotas, he said. "There's not a silver bullet that's going to replace tobacco," he said, "but there are a lot of different things our farmers are diversifying into that will help out." Enditem