Scarcnet News Summaries (Advocacy Institute)
Tobacco Farmers Blame Tobacco Imports For Their Hardship
Length: pages
Abstract
With imports of tobacco leaf reaching a record high of 41.6 percent of the total tobacco used in the US this year, many tobacco farmers are worried about what the future will bring, and are blaming the tobacco companies for not protecting them. "The real threat is that the [tobacco] industry is maneuvering itself to move offshore," said C.D. Bryant, a tobacco farmer in Danville, VA, and director of Concerned Friends for Tobacco, a nonprofit group of tobacco growers. "Obviously we can only conclude that they don't care about us." Projected cutbacks in future US tobacco leaf purchases leave farmers in "a very serious situation" says Lionel Edwards, general manager of the Flue-Cured Tobacco Co-op Stabilization Corp. in Raleigh, NC. "Some operations were cut so much that they can't meet cash-flow needs."
But Big Tobacco denies that it is abandoning the farmers. "The notion that companies don't care about [domestic] growers is simply wrong," said Phil Carlton, lead attorney for tobacco firms on grower issues. "They just get down in the dumps when their livelihood is in peril."
Source: Steven Ginsberg, "Tobacco Farmers Feel The Heat," WASHINGTON POST, January 2, 1999, p. F1.