Tobacco By: Michael Thompson

Thesis Statement The Tobacco Transition Impact Program, or tobacco buyout, has discouraged growing the crop and killed small farms: Abolished government price support Abolished production controls for tobacco Pays farmers to stop growing the crop

The removal of the government production control allows farmers to raise as much and what type of tobacco as they want but this can intimidate small farm from starting to grow tobacco

The removal of government price supports put the farmers, that continue to grow tobacco, at the mercy of a free market

Farmers are given the a decision to quit growing tobacco and the government will pay them for it Many of the farmers, that took the buyout, have to look to other crops to pay the bills

People believe the goal of the program is to get rid of tobacco production all together It will probably just get rid of the small farmers

The larger farms have increased their production of the crop since the program started in 2005 This has discouraged smaller farms to quit raising the crop all together or look at other crops to raise along with tobacco

Farmers that still grow the crop have to be able to market it because many of the warehouses,that they held auctions in to sell their crops in, have been closed

Most of tobacco grew now is under contract Many farmers have to be able contract their tobacco if they want sell their crop

Many farmers believe that it is unwise to grow tobacco uncontracted because there is no more price safety net by the government

Without production controls in place now, many farms have increased the acres of tobacco they produce now They have also started to use new ways to harvest, cure, and market it to cut the cost of raising it

In 2002 the average tobacco farm in North Carolina had 21 acres of tobacco In 2007 it had increased to 65 acres

The reason many farms increased production is no way to tell what the price their crop will bring

While in North Carolina production has increased, Kentucky and Tennessee are a different case They have lost more than half of their tobacco acreage since the buyout

They still have a large number of small farms with less than 2 acres These are the people that would seam to be best fitted to take the buyout but that's not the case

Many don't take the buyout because tobacco produces the best profits in small acreages verse that of corn and other field crops

Many farmers don't know if they will raise tobacco one year to the next Even if they have a good yield in two year straight, both years can produce 2 very different profits

Many growers have looked in the promotion of American grown tobacco overseas as a solution Another solution is manufacturing tobacco products and selling it under their own brand name

Because of low contract prices, many farmers who want to continue growing tobacco have to look at other crops to grow with it They also look at better ways to grow tobacco to gain a bigger profits

Farmers have been growing strawberries, tomatoes, and other small crops to sell other than their tobacco Some larger operations have opened garden centers A few tobacco farms have went into the prawn, or freshwater shrimp, industry

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Gray, Tim. "Where there's smoke,." Business North Carolina. (2007): Bickers, Chris. "Low prices have tobacco growers." Southeast Farmpress. (2008): Bickers, Chris. "Price-squeezed tobacco growers." Southeast Farmpress. (2008): 6- 9.