Tobacco By: Michael Thompson

1. Tobacco By: Michael Thompson

2. 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 Thesis Statement

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

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

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

11. 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

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

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

14. 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

15. 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

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Hart, John. "The Initial of the Tobacco Buyout Program." Geographical Review. 101.3 (2011): 447-457. Todd, Anne. "Taking the Plunge." Rural Cooperatives. (2011): 4-7. Jones, Alison, W. Austin, Robert Beach, and David Altman. "Funding of North Carolina Tobacco Control Programs Through the Master Settlement Agreement." American Journal of Public Health. 97.1 (2007): 36- 44.

22. Gray, Tim. "Where there's smoke,." Business North Carolina. (2007): 20-23. Bickers, Chris. "Low prices have tobacco growers." Southeast Farmpress. (2008): 27-28. Bickers, Chris. "Price-squeezed tobacco growers." Southeast Farmpress. (2008): 6- 9.