Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 25, 1994 TAG: 9403250104
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHATHAM LENGTH: Medium
Hank Maxey and his father, like nearly all of the full-time farmers in Pittsylvania County, depend on tobacco to pay their bills. But they're open to all of the alternative crops that have been touted during the past decade.
They've tried tomatoes, cucumbers and broccoli. The problem is, none has worked very well. The droughts in the summer and clay in the soil - ideal for tobacco - withered the tomatoes. And the bottom dropped out of the cucumber market when a pickle company stopped buying in Virginia.
They plan to grow broccoli again this year on about 15 acres. But the money they get for the broccoli comes to about $1,500 an acre, compared with $3,700 per acre for tobacco, Hank Maxey said.
"There is no crop a tobacco farmer can grow and continue to make his payments and pay the bills that he pays," Maxey said.
Jim Jones, director of the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Experiment Station in Blackstone, and Steve Britt, the Cooperative Extension Service agent in Pittsylvania County, agreed that tobacco would be tough, if not impossible, to replace.
Soils in southern Virginia are relatively infertile. Jones said that trying to grow anything besides tobacco as a main crop "is a good way to go broke."
The proposed Clinton health reform plan would raise the federal tax on cigarettes from 24 cents to 99 cents per pack. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee approved a $1.25-a-pack increase in the cigarette tax. The extra revenue would provide subsidies for small businesses, anti-smoking campaigns and $100 million to retrain tobacco farmers.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy suggested such a plan as something similar to how the Clinton administration handled the timber situation in the Pacific Northwest.
The administration offered assistance there to "reorient" timber manufacturers and provided cash grants to towns hurt by reductions in timber harvesting, Espy said.
Hank Maxey said the farm aid "is more or less a ploy to try to . . . sway some people not sure how to vote on the tax increase. That's not going to ease the minds of any tobacco farmers."
Virginia ranks fourth among 16 tobacco-producing states. Tobacco, the state's biggest cash crop, brings in $200 million while taking up 50,000 acres. And tobacco sales stimulate economic activity in the state by as much as $400 million, according to the extension service.
Studies funded by the tobacco industry show that raising the tobacco tax would sharply reduce consumption and, in turn, the demand for the crop.
"It's going to set off a chain reaction all through the economy," Jones said.
Scientists are looking for ways to use tobacco to produce medicines, biochemicals and proteins for humans. But Jones said the markets would be small. "A few acres probably would supply all the pharmaceuticals used in the world," he said.
At the agricultural experiment station, agronomists are growing different fruits and vegetables in the soil used for growing tobacco, and cotton as well.
Raspberry, blueberries and strawberries are potential alternative crops for a few tobacco farmers, Jones said.
But Britt said the markets for alternative crops may be insufficient because farmers don't have the competitive advantage that they have with tobacco.
And Jones said the rolling countryside suitable for the small tobacco farms is generally unsuitable for cotton fields, which require large, flat tracts.
"When you really boil it down," Britt said, "you're dealing with a high-value crop that our economy has been based on for more than 200 years. The land, the climate and our agriculture community are well suited to producing that crop. If we go to something else, we're still going to lose the majority of the farmers."
by CNB