Tobacco Auction May Close for Good

Source from:  By DANIEL PEARCE, SUN MEDIA Fri, March 7, 2008  03/09/2008

Facebook Digg Del.icio.us Google Stumble Upon Furl Newsvine Reddit Technorati Blinklist Feed Me Yahoo Socializer Ma.gnolia Raw Sugar Simpy Squidoo Spurl Blink Bits Rojo Blogmarks Shadows Netvouz Scuttle Co.mments Bloglines Tailrank Sitejot + Help Tobacco auction employee Albert Reynaert sweeps up discarded tobacco leaves in Delhi yesterday. (Daniel Pearce, Sun Media) Farmers cleared their barns of the last remaining bales of cured golden leaf and brought them to the tobacco auction here yesterday -- possibly for the last time. It was the final day of selling for the 2007 crop and maybe the final day for the industry. With crop size down to a seventh of what it was a decade ago, the tobacco board has given up trying to preserve the quota system and the anonymity provided by an auction system. Now the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board has called for a return to the days when farmers sold directly to cigarette companies, hoping this will stop the collapse in their industry. "It's too bad this era has to end," said auction manager Chuck Emre, whose grandparents were among the county's first tobacco farmers. "We can grow tobacco as well as anyone in the world. Now -- boom -- it's gone." "Everybody is losing money, I don't care what they say," said Marcel Vanhooren, a Courtland grower who has been in the business all his life. "How long can you do that for?" Turkey Point area grower Gilbert Deleye said his profits are gone as well and he may not plant this spring. Deleye first started coming to the auction 35 years ago with his dad and said "it's a depressing thought" that he is watching it for the last time. He said he's not in a position to retire, but has no idea what else he can grow or work at. Vanhooren, however, plans to stick it out, hoping things will turn around. "At some point we feel there's going to be some money somewhere," he said, pointing to the large profits the cigarette companies make. Vanhooren said the real loss has been the sense of community that once surrounded the industry. "I loved the community. They were all good people in tobacco. People are not as nice or as friendly any more." If the auction shuts its doors for good, 60 jobs will be lost. "I feel sorry for the young people who want to stay in the industry," said employee Albert Reynaert, a retired tobacco farmer. "I was able to raise a family with this." Jane Bouw, who works in the auction cafeteria, used to grow with her husband Ed. The pair got out of the business at its peak in 1979. "We never thought we'd see this day," Bouw said. Enditem