THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408060051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E01 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: A Culture in Retreat
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 204 lines
IT'S SHORTLY after dawn, late in July, and Paul Pruitt is leading six of his Mexican workers through rows of tobacco in a small field on White Oak Mountain.
They are topping the tobacco, a practice that goes back almost four centuries. They break off the pretty white flowers atop each of the chest-high plants, ending upward growth and directing the nutrients from the sandy soil into making huge leaves, typically 20 to a stalk.
Tobacco has remained a low-tech, hands-on crop, almost like a garden, ever since Jamestown settlers planted the tiny seeds in 1610.
What has changed, especially over the past year, is the political and cultural climate.
Tobacco farmers, once considered pillars of their communities, suddenly have targets on their chests.
The surgeon general is shooting at them, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, the FDA, other federal initials and the president of the United States, who is considering a fat tax on every pack of cigarettes.
Pruitt, who works 92 acres in Pittsylvania County, wonders why, with all the social ills in the world, he and other tobacco farmers are being picked on.
After all, he points out, it's drinkers, not smokers, who run down the road and kill people.
``Really, what irritates the farmers so bad,'' he said, ``is that every time you turn the radio on, you hear tobacco, tobacco, tobacco, but you never hear about liquor.''
Clarence Bryant, who also raises tobacco in Pittsylvania County, hears the same media message.
``If I wasn't in tobacco,'' he said, ``I would think it was the worst evil in the world.''
Used in moderation, Bryant said, tobacco is fine. He says he smokes five or six cigarettes a day.
Every farmer seems to know someone who smoked every day and lived to be old as dirt. Or someone who quit or cut way back. What addiction? they ask.
This could be the last generation of American tobacco farmers. They feel assaulted, they say, by a government that neither likes nor understands them. They pine for the old days, when their main worry was the weather.
TOBACCO'S A MIRACLE PLANT. Starting from a seed about the size of finely ground pepper, one plant can produce a third of a pound of tobacco. That's 375 cigarettes, enough to support a pack-a-day habit for almost 19 days. An acre contains 6,000 plants, enough for 123,640 packs of 20 cigarettes.
For a farmer, the payoff from tobacco is many times greater than from any other crop.
Typically, a farmer grosses $3,740 per acre and nets more than $1,000. He might make $150 an acre on corn, less on wheat. No wonder they call tobacco the Golden Leaf. Farmers say they need tobacco to support themselves: They don't own the large, fertile fields it takes to make less lucrative crops profitable.
Tobacco has been golden for tax collectors, too.
An acre produces $62,685 in state and federal taxes. That's based on the federal tax of 24 cents per pack of cigarettes, which is expected to almost double or worse, and the average state tax of 26.7 cents. In Virginia, the state tax per pack is 2 cents, but cities and counties add more.
Pruitt owns neither the land he farms nor the right to grow tobacco. He rents 92 acres and leases the federal tobacco allotments. He says there's no place else he'd rather be than in a tobacco field.
``My parents raised 23 children off tobacco,'' he said. ``That's why I take such pride in tobacco. The only thing I have ever known was tobacco.''
Pruitt started working in tobacco fields at 6 and dropped out of school after the eighth grade to help his father farm.
His 14 brothers and eight sisters went on to other occupations, but Pruitt was hooked on growing tobacco.
He heads into the fields about 5:30 a.m. and stays as long as it's light enough to walk the rows with his workers.
``This is one of the hardest things you can do on a farm,'' he said. ``I have thoroughly enjoyed it.''
His wife does the paperwork, which grows every year, as though fertilized. There are forms for listing the hours the Mexicans work, the chemicals they use, the tasks they perform. There is some kind of restriction on almost everything, including how many acres a farmer can plant and how many pounds he can pull.
Tobacco farmers say pulled, not harvested, because the leaves are pulled off, first the lowest, which mature first, later the middle ones, and finally the top ones, which are the highest grade.
Individuals own the allotments and can sell or lease them, but only to someone in the same county. Allotments are passed on in wills, like land. They may be part of a farmer's retirement plans but could be rendered worthless if the market for American tobacco collapses.
The allotments hold down supply, so prices will remain high. This year's allotments are down 10 percent from last year, by federal decree, because not all of last year's crop sold. Farmers fear next year's allotment could be cut 10 percent or more if this year's crop does not sell completely. Farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for their crop in return for accepting planting restrictions.
THE AREA THAT NOW is Virginia was the undisputed North American king of tobacco production from the early 1600s until the Civil War devastated the state. Tobacco leadership then passed on to Kentucky and North Carolina.
Today, North Carolina grows about six times as much as Virginia, Kentucky about five times as much. Nationally, Virginia, with 49,000 acres of tobacco, usually ranks fourth or fifth in production.
Only 15 Virginia counties grow more than 1 square mile of tobacco, and nearly half the total is grown in three counties on the North Carolina line: Pittsylvania, which wraps around Danville; Halifax; and Mecklenburg.
In total acreage, tobacco is Virginia's seventh leading crop, but in bucks, it ranks second, at $178 million last year, behind only hay.
As farms get bigger, the number of tobacco farmers dwindles. Pittsylvania had about 3,200 tobacco farmers two decades ago but only about 1,400 today. The Farm Bureau says 11,000 Virginia farmers grow tobacco.
Since the 1600s, the secrets of tobacco farming have been handed down from father to son. Virtually all tobacco farmers were born into the business.
Bryant, the 41-year-old Pittsylvania farmer who smokes five or six cigarettes a day, grew up on one of the biggest tobacco farms in the state. He dreamed of being a farmer but was allergic to practically everything on the farm, from animals to tobacco dust.
Then, at age 13, his allergies disappeared, and suddenly he was in pig heaven, or rather tobacco heaven, able to work on the farm.
Like most south-central Virginians, he grows flue-cured tobacco, which is used in cigarettes. Hot air flowing through his barns cooks his tobacco, and he says he can tell by the scent how the leaves are doing.
A federal inspector grades the crop after it's cured.
Bryant begins with seeds in a bed, like a garden. Later, the plants are transplanted into his fields. Each plant may be touched by human hands 10 times or more.
Between the hands-on work and the inspector's score at the end, farmers' egos become incredibly tied up with their crops. You might think they raised prize roses.
``It's part of me,'' Bryant said. ``It's like it flows in my veins.''
Corn and wheat farmers dump seed in the ground, Bryant said, but the tobacco crop is personal.
On Sunday afternoons in tobacco country, farmers drive their trucks around to judge each other's crops.
George Washington wrote of his ``mortification'' at not being able to grow top grade tobacco at Mount Vernon; he wondered if his failure would affect his military and civilian leadership.
One historian wrote that a 17th century plantation owner was thrown into a ``frenzy of self-evaluation'' if he overheard any criticism of his crop.
Today's tobacco farmers are no different.
Jack Vick, 71, the only tobacco farmer in Southampton County, can admire his tobacco fields from the front and rear windows of his house. There's tobacco in six fields, about 60 acres in all.
If he quit growing tobacco, he would break a family chain that dates at least to 1675, when, according to court records, Vick's ancestor, Joseph Vick, bought 50 acres of land near Franklin for 300 pounds of tobacco.
In Jack Vick's mind, the year is divided into the different steps of tobacco growing.
``After a while,'' he said, ``it just seems like it's time to put your tobacco out. I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have it. People talk about getting addicted to nicotine. I get addicted to planting. I like tobacco. I really do. I don't smoke, but I like it.
``My son, Steven, he loves the peanut to death. He don't care too much about tobacco. He would rather be out there cultivating peanuts or spraying them.''
But Vick wants to walk the rows and pull the tobacco and hang it in his rack barns to cure and take it off to market.
``Growing tobacco is a tradition to me. I feel like I don't want to be the one not to grow it. If they take it away from me, I can't help it.''
Without question, this nation was built on the golden leaf. It wasn't another cash crop. It was the cash crop.
If a tobacco plant could talk, it would say, ``Show a little gratitude.''
Farmers repeat, ``Why us?'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photos by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Paul Pruitt, who started workinbg on tobacco fields at age 6, looks
over his crop in Danville, Va.
In preparation fo a tobacco auction, migrant worker Ramon Jyrec,
right, and laborer Douglas Smith work in a Danville warehouse
repackaging tobacco over from last year's harvest.
Clarence Reeves totes tobacco on a Danville farm owned by Danny
Finch. Reeves has worked on tobacco farms for the past 30 years.
Staff photos by JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Southampton County farmer Jack Vick checks his tobacco plants for
suckers, while his 11-year-old granddaughter Jessica helps out.
Foreman Donny Prior takes a drag while repackaging tobacco from last
year's harvest.
TOBACCO FARMERS' TOP 10 FEARS AND WOES
10. Dependence on foreign labor, mostly from Mexico.
9. The threat of a huge increase in the excise tax on
cigarettes.
8. Reductions in the amount of tobacco permitted to be grown.
7. Competition from cheaper tobacco grown overseas.
6. Uncertainty about how much U.S. tobacco cigarette companies
will buy.
5. Lawsuits against tobacco companies that could snuff out
tobacco's once-proud flame.
4. Daily pummeling in the press and on TV.
3. The possibility cigarette companies might move to friendlier
climes overseas, leaving American farmers in the lurch.
2. Lack of a profitable replacement crop.
1. THE GOVERNMENT! a k a CLINTON!
by CNB