Tobacco still South Carolina's 'money crop' as farmers try to hang on

[El Presidente]

Tobacco still South Carolina's 'money crop' as farmers try to hang on

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/tobacco-still-south-carolina-s-money-crop-as-farmers-try/article_e469a0c2-9c9b-11e7-815f-cfed465a6c36.html

• By Bo Petersen [email protected]
• Sep 23, 2017

 

DARLINGTON — Flue-cured tobacco. The smell is intoxicating, resiny and rich. 

Pulled from the curing barn, the sap still clings to the nutty brown leaves that have been carefully tended since the saplings were planted out in the spring. The market value depends on the unpredictable changes through the growing season. 

Under pressure, tobacco farming, once a premier farming mainstay in the Carolinas for decades, is disappearing beneath the weight of a steep drop in the percentage of people who smoke, along with government restrictions and leaves grown cheaper overseas.

 

To keep the money crop alive, South Carolina growers are chasing trends such as organic tobacco and promoting research to improve productivity. They compete heavily to sell to the few tobacco companies still in the market. What once was a form of Carolina gold now has farmers chasing every advantage they can get in an unforgiving market.

The leaves on a recent September morning came from 7 acres at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center, run by Clemson University, near Darlington. The center is there to test fertilizers, disease and pest control — to improve the crop.

The research is paid for by the growers themselves.

“It's the key, not just to tobacco, but to every crop we grow,” contends farmer Neal Baxley of Mullins. “All those other crops, you can use federal money for research. You can’t use it for tobacco.”

Clemson discourages smoking

At the Pee Dee center, the 7 tobacco acres take up only a small slice of 800 crop acres overall. The lab work is much the same as for other crops the center studies. Findings from any one crop potentially could improve other crops.

“The center is one of the unique facilities” because of its research success, said Director Matt Smith. Among recent work was discovering the role of proteins called serpins inhibiting plant disease pathogens.

The tobacco research, however, is kept low-key. Public attitudes have changed. In 1965, more than 40 percent of adults smoked, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, only 15 percent did. But in South Carolina, nearly 20 percent did.

Clemson in 2016 declared itself tobacco-free for health and fire safety reasons, according to its Student Affairs website.

In the 2017 research and extension work plan for Clemson and S.C. State University, tobacco is mentioned once in 102 pages.

The studies are funded by an assessment that individual tobacco growers pay, 30 cents on every 100 pounds of crop they sell, said Aaron Wood, S.C. Department of Agriculture spokesman. That comes to about $6,000 per year for research, he said. Wood did not say how much the 2017 allotment was for the research center.

Farmers turned to the assessment when the federal government quit paying for research in the early 2000s.

Tobacco is costly to grow, hands-on and labor intensive. The seedlings must be started in the winter under cover. When the plant blooms, the flowers must be pulled off to keep the nicotine resin rich. Leaves must be picked individually as they turn golden, then dried out in heated curing barns without ruining them.

Then the harvest competes with others at market. Despite its value as a crop, if you’re not under contract to a tobacco company, you can’t make money on it.

For farmers, their livelihood now depends on winning one of those contracts and having the know-how to make it pay.

Still, in South Carolina, tobacco remains easily the most profitable crop. Some 13,000 acres of it was harvested in the state this year, about half of that in the soil of Horry County alone.

Leaves of gold

The Pee Dee once was the heart of tobacco growing in the state, its market so valuable that a railroad spur was extended to a line of warehouses in Mullins just for the product. Today, most farmers have turned from tobacco to grow peanuts or soybeans.

The few hanging on do it for the earnings, sure. But also because this is what they know how to grow.

For some the rewards can be enviable. In 2016, 106,000 acres of peanuts were harvested in South Carolina, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, worth $66 million dollars, or about $623 per acre. Some 405,000 acres of soybeans were harvested, worth $121 million, about $300 per acre.

Tobacco was worth $3,700 per acre. The leaves from those stained acres are worth more than $48 million.

 

Tobacco growing has been in Baxley’s family for generations. The earnings kept him fed as a child, he said, and paid for him to attend The Citadel as a young man. The 38-year-old has grown it all his life. The crop is the sort of challenge farmers enjoy, requiring a tricky mix of plowing, watering and fertilizing. There’s craft to it, he said.

A few years back, Baxley turned to growing it organically, using only natural plants and herbal remedies to control pests, despite the extra work. The organic leaves pull in a better price. He grows exclusively for the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., which makes American Spirit cigarettes, one of the designer wave brands.

He did it as a hedge to stay in the business, he said, to fight off the eroding market prices because of foreign competition. The homegrown tag is a “value added” selling point. Even internationally, American tobacco “is the French wine of tobacco," he said.

Tobacco's future

Farming a vilified plant for a livelihood is a touchy thing, for sure. Five growers and two health professionals declined to talk for the story or didn’t returned calls about the health concerns or the politics of tobacco.

“We generally don’t comment on tobacco growing issues. All types of tobacco when burned and inhaled into the lungs cause or worsen a variety of lung diseases,” said Allison MacMunn, the American Lung Association’s media relations director.

The plant, though, has more value than just cigarettes.

Nicotine has vaccine and other medical uses, said Michael Cummings, the co-leader of a tobacco research project at the Hollings Cancer Center. It might have a future with non-combustible nicotine delivery systems. Cummings’ group at the Medical University of South Carolina is studying the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a quit-smoking tool.

“What we see is the devastating health effects. But we shouldn’t blame the tobacco farmers. When you look at the big picture, the tobacco companies have been no friend to them. Health groups have lumped farmers in with the companies, and that's unfortunate," Cummings said.

"I look at this way," Baxley said. "I grow corn. They take corn to make corn syrup for colas, to feed hogs. The sugar and fat can kill you. Anything done in excess is going to kill you."

The center's job is to find out how to make crops better for growers, to take the guesswork out of the business, said Jimmy Farmer, its farm manager. Farmer, a lifelong grower, never grew tobacco himself. He never won an allotment.

“Of all the crops, that’s the only crop I don’t grow,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that plant is disappearing from the landscape in Florence County. Horry is still holding on.”

[Bartolomeo]

Still well represented here in NC but I have seen the decline since I moved here in 2001....