Our State/July

Troubled Tobacco

By Ralph Grizzle

You don't need to know much about punitive settlements or the cost of a carton of cigarettes in New York to understand the plight of tobacco in North Carolina. All you really need to know is Frank Yost.

Yost, 68, began working in tobacco at age 5. The son of a sharecropper, the Oak Ridge, North Carolina farmer purchased 23 acres of his own 25 years ago, land that he had been farming since he returned home from the Korean War.

But next year, Yost may have to give up farming tobacco altogether. His allotment, the amount of tobacco the state allows him to sell, has dwindled to a mere three acres, hardly worth the effort. Yost will likely lease his allotment to another farmer, one who can gain enough economies of scale to make a profit from cultivating what used to be the state's number one agricultural commodity. (Though tobacco remains the number one crop, poultry and hogs recently replaced tobacco as the state's top agricultural income earner.

North Carolina's king crop is in danger of vanishing and along with it a great source of livelihood for farmers who have spent a lifetime toiling under the hot summer's sun to prime the bulky yellow leaves.

From 1997 through 1999, flue-cured tobacco production plummeted by 50 percent, according to North Carolina's Department of Agricultural Statistics. "We're estimating another 16 percent drop for this year," says Bob Murphy, a state statistician. North Carolina farms produced 718 million pounds of flue-cured tobacco in 1997, but only 436 million pounds in 1999. Changes in the allotment for burley tobacco have been even more severe. Quotas were cut 45 percent this year alone. That means that a lot of acreage that was planted in tobacco is now bare or planted with other crops.

Perpetuating the diminishing tobacco production in this state, as well as nationwide, are a number of factors well-known to most North Carolinians: changing lifestyles, perpetual litigation against the tobacco companies, larger punitive settlements, and rising taxes on cigarettes. New York State recently imposed an additional 50 percent tax on cigarettes that raised the cost of a carton to $40.

If tobacco does go the way of the milk deliveryman, a healthy chunk of the state's economy could go with it. The crop that rakes in more than $1 billion a year for the state also generates more than $100 million in state taxes and provides jobs for 114,000 North Carolinians. North Carolina leads the nation in the production of flue-cured tobacco, accounting for 66 percent of the national output.

The imposed allotments, which are based on demand, already spell trouble for many farmers. "It's like cutting your salary in half," the state's Murphy says, "yet you still have the same investment and upkeep in equipment and the same expenses."

While tobacco, on average, can yield from $3,500 to $4,000 an acre, few other crops can produce that kind of money. The two exceptions are vegetables and strawberries. So on acreage where tobacco once grew, farmers like Yost have planted bountiful harvests of the red pulpy berry and other agrarian products.

Strawberry Fields Forever

A sign on Highway 68 points the way to Ma & Pa's Strawberry Farm. Under the shade of an awning that projects from an old barn, Frank Yost stands behind a table. He is wearing bib overalls, boots, a plaid shirt and a camouflaged cap embroidered gold with the words "Blackburn Insurance."

Buckets of ripe strawberries sit atop the table along with a sheet of "Free Recipes," compiled by Frank's wife Beulah. "U Pick," reads a hand-painted sign, "$6." It's only a dollar extra if you buy one of the buckets of already picked strawberries.

Frank invites me inside the old tobacco barn. "We call this a stick barn," he says, pointing out that leaves of tobacco were tied to sticks that were hanged from a series of poles from one barn wall to the other. After the barn is filled with tobacco, the leaves were cured using heat generated from a large propane burner. Once cured, the yellow leaves were gathered in a burlap blanket and taken to the warehouses. "I've been farming tobacco all my life," Yost says. "But now nobody really knows what's going to happen. There are so many lawsuits against the tobacco companies that some are saying they may go bankrupt."

To brace himself for that potential outcome, Yost began raising strawberries five years ago. "I kind of enjoy strawberries," he says, leaning in the doorway of his barn. "But I'd really rather be raising tobacco. With tobacco, there are not as many headaches."

Strawberries, on the other hand, can be ornery. "You have to worry about disease, so you have to spray [to keep the plants disease-free]," Yost says. "If it is going to frost, you've got to run irrigation all night. Frost will kill strawberry plants, but solid ice will not."

Yost shows me his tobacco planter, where two people sit on a tractor-drawn trailer of sorts distributing seeds into the good earth. We stopped to look at his three tractors and the wagons that were pulled behind them down the rows of tobacco.

Future generations of North Carolinians may know tobacco farm machinery only from pictures or museum artifacts. A part of our culture is vanishing.

And while many tobacco farmers can find other products to sustain them, there are limitations. "Do we really need 270,000 acres of strawberries?" the state's Bob Murphy asks. "That's how much acreage is planted in tobacco. You can't take all of that and grow strawberries."

Possible as Sidebar: A Vanishing Part of Our Heritage

While few people would advocate smoking nowadays, it is sad to see a part of North Carolina's past slipping into oblivion. There is a romance about toiling under the hot sun to harvest the broad green leaves that grow high on slender stalks.

While my dad was a logger, we occasionally helped neighboring farmers in their tobacco harvest. I remember working my way along rows of shoulder-high plants on hot summer days. I remember the heat and tipping up a Mason Jar filled with cubes of ice and topped with sweet tea or cold water, droplets of water beading down the sides of the glass, and down my forehead as well.

I remember loading the leaves onto a trailer pulled behind a tractor and stringing the leaves on tobacco sticks that would be taken to barns made from logs hand-squared and chinked with mud.

I remember piling the tobacco high on trucks and trailers to be taken to market, and watching as the auctioneer, speaking up to 600 words per minute, sold the yellow leaves to bidders. Tobacco may be vanishing, but I will never forget the smell of Durham or Winston-Salem or Reidsville and other towns where tobacco was processed.

Walter Wilkerson of Williamston, North Carolina, has been an auctioneer for 42 years now. His lyrical voice has earned him many awards for his calling abilities. He, too, mourns the passing of tobacco. "It's always been a part of our heritage," he says. "It has been a way of life here for years and years and years. I hate to see it go."