What Is Happening to our Tobacco Farmers?
A Guide for North Carolina's Churches and Concerned Citizens

The Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA, with support from private donors, church, and foundation sources, has undertaken the Tobacco Communities Project, a four-year effort to support tobacco farmers and rural communities in North Carolina. Due to the importance of tobacco to many farm families in North Carolina for the past century and the changes currently occurring in tobacco, this project takes a community based approach to assisting farmers in adjusting to these changes and finding ways to stay viable on the farm.

North Carolina enjoys an unusually large number of diversified family farms. This is due primarily to tobacco, which generally comprises a small portion of the acreage but a large part of the income on the 12,000 farms on which it is grown. The profitability of tobacco allows farmers to continue to grow much of our food and fiber in the state. The number of farms in North Carolina is in rapid decline (we lose one per day), and nowhere is this clearer than with small family farms that grow tobacco. In addition to the reduction in domestic smoking, the amount of inexpensive, foreign grown tobacco being imported into this country is rising dramatically, decreasing the demand for North Carolina leaf and forcing many local farmers to “get big or get out.”

NUMBER OF NORTH CAROLINA FARMERS

North Carolina tobacco farmers are rapidly disappearing

FLUE-CURED tobacco IMPORTS FOR U.S. CONSUMPTION

The primary reason that relatively many family farms have survived in North Carolina is the Federal Tobacco Program, a New Deal policy which restricts the amount of tobacco which can be grown, providing growers with a stable quantity and price. Elimination of that program would result in more tobacco being grown at a lower price on fewer, larger farms. In a 1999 telephone survey of 1200 Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm families, growers indicated that elimination of the program would pose a huge risk to their farms and local communities.

HOW GREAT A RISK IS ELIMINATING THE FEDERAL tobacco PROGRAM TO YOU AND YOUR COMMUNITY?

The federal tobacco supply control program is an essential element for small farm profitability.

Tobacco farms are diversified in their production (soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, livestock, and wholesale produce are the primary additional crops), but the price of basic commodities is in continual decline. Farmers have become increasingly more efficient in their production of raw commodities, but their share of the consumer food dollar has shrunk dramatically over the past 50 years. The best opportunities for farmers lie in adding value to their products through additional processing and marketing.

The telephone survey let farmers tell of their interest in developing other profitable on-farm activities; farmers also identified the barriers they see in creating these new enterprises. Sixty-six percent expressed a desire to try other on-farm activities to supplement declining tobacco income; however, there are no "silver bullets" out there to replace tobacco. Tobacco is necessary to finance diversification, and development of alternative enterprises to reduce dependence on tobacco is a challenging and gradual process. Each farm has a unique situation, and farmers are looking for a combination of enterprises to sustain their farms and communities into the next century.

FARMERS' SHARE OF FOOD DOLLAR

Farmers are receiving a declining portion of consumer food expenditures.

Barriers to Supplementation

A: Nothing is as profitable as tobacco.
B: Lack of processing plants in tobacco communities.
C: No place to sell new products.
D: Low supply of quality labor.
E: Lack of capital for new business ventures.
F: Lack of low interest loans or grants.
G: Lack of support from leaders.
H: Need additional skills.
I: No interest in anything but tobacco.

These changes and farmers’ efforts to adjust are reshaping rural North Carolina forever. If the church is truly concerned with its people and community, then the church must be at the center of the debate about our society’s support of agriculture. Farmers are caretakers of God’s creation, our connection with the natural world, and, as the providers of our food, the protectors of our species. We have entrusted them with our lives.

There are many reasons why members and clergy of the church must be concerned with what is happening to farmers. First, the spiritual role of farmers as caretakers of the creation should be revered, not reduced to producing the most at the lowest price. Farmers feel called to produce food and fiber, and the church traditionally supports people in following their calling. Second, our rural communities depend on agriculture. With fewer farmers, there are fewer businesses, fewer schools, and fewer churches. When farms become large and industrial, they are less likely to use local merchants and banks; the money that they generate is less likely to remain in the community. Their children will not be in the schools, and the skills that those children develop will be lost to that community.

The most immediate concern, however, is the human cost of the restructuring of American agriculture. According to Benny Bunting, director of Farm Plan Advocates, a non-profit organization which assists farmers who are facing foreclosure, “Most people who work with the land are deeply religious. They’re in a constant struggle with nature...When a storm or drought or natural disaster destroys their crop, it feels as though God has turned his back on them as well, as though they are being punished for past sins. The church has a responsibility to know these people. The church must get past not trying to reach out to people who are hurting, who often feel that they have nowhere to turn.”

Throughout history the church has been instrumental in addressing social concerns. The difficulties now facing rural farm families provide the opportunity for church members to actively support these communities in their economic, social, and spiritual needs.

What Churches Can Do to Support Local Farms

Data in this pamphlet came from three sources: the United States Department of Agriculture, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, and a telephone survey of 1200 Eastern North Carolina tobacco farmers conducted by the Tobacco Communities Project in the winter of 1999.

For more information on the Tobacco Communities
Project or to share your concerns, call:
Rural Advancement Foundation International - USA (RAFI-USA)
P.O. Box 640
Pittsboro, NC 27312
919-542-1396

Return to Tobacco Communities Project (1997-2000) Newsletters Index

Return to RAFI-USA website - Tobacco Communities Initiative 2003