Lexington, KY - Tobacco growers in Kentucky have faced many challenges in past years, including inclement weather, market instability and rising production costs. Buying stations have closed or moved, and contract volumes have been significantly reduced for many burley tobacco growers. These changes have impacted some regions of Kentucky much more than others. Uncertainty about future regulatory action hangs over the entire tobacco industry like a heavy cloud. Still, tobacco remains as an important commodity in the agricultural economy of the region as growers prepare for future seasons.
Between 1954 and 1992, the number of U.S. farms that grew tobacco dropped 75 percent, while foreign acreage planted in that crop continued to escalate, making the United States the leading worldwide importer of tobacco. Lower overhead costs and cheaper labor give developing countries a great deal of appeal to corporations such as Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, which both have huge investments overseas.
Going with grapes
For three or four decades, farmers such as Julie and Nelson Clinkenbeard, owners of Atwood Hill Winery & Vineyard, LLC, located at 1616 Spillman Road in Atwood, Ky., in Kenton County, had been told that specialization was the only way to compete. No longer should they have a dairy farm or small gardens or orchards. They've been advised that small or minor crops should be eliminated and turned into tobacco factories. When they made the decision to stop farming tobacco in 2004, the Clinkenbeards did not expect that, seven years later, they would be putting their six-generation farmhouse to use as a rental venue for wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners.
"My momma grew up in that house," Nelson Clinkenbeard said. "When we pulled down all the old plaster, we found ... beautiful, well-preserved wood that was the original walls."
The Clinkenbeards began to consider the character of the family farmhouse as a potentially marketable commodity because of the growing challenges of tobacco farming. Like many other farmers, the Clinkenbeards knew that tobacco was squeezing them into an increasingly tight financial vise, and something had to give. For countless tobacco farmers with large volumes and low income, the push away from diversification hasn't worked. They've become caught in a cost-price freeze, as overhead and labor costs have continued to rise while tobacco growers struggled to keep pace with changes in the labor program that allow them to legally employ migrant workers.
So the Clinkenbeards decided to go to a diversification meeting at the Kenton County agriculture extension to see what alternative options were out there. The meeting just so happened to be about growing grapes, and the Kenton County ag agency brought in two local Kentucky wineries at the meeting, encouraging farmers with the message that grape production for wine was a sustainable alternative agriculture.
"We went into the meeting with an open mind, and when we left, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do," said Julie Clinkenbeard.
They started with one acre of grapes and used it as a learning curve. Today, the Clinkenbeards have three acres of mature vineyards, and they have built a tasting room for their visitors, which is open Fridays from 5-9 p.m., Saturdays from 1-9 p.m. and Sundays from 1-6 p.m. They have created several different wines that have been decorated with several awards.
Animal instincts
For many in Kentucky's tobacco country, supplementing income with alternative crops has become more a necessity than a pastime. Some farmers are experimenting with all-natural chickens. Others run dairy farms, adding value to milk by making cheese on the farm, like Bill Payne, owner of Knob Lick Farm LLC, which is located in Lincoln County at 4885 Knob Lick Road in Stanford, Ky. The last year that Payne decided to grow tobacco was 1998. The major factors that aided in the decision to discontinue the crop were the age of the farm's primary decision maker, availability of labor, cost of labor, other crop or livestock opportunities, and uncertainty about the future income from tobacco.
At that time, Knob Lick Farm already had a start on its next chapter in agriculture.
"My father and I had a beef herd all along, so when my father did retire, I decided to increase my beef cattle and sell the dairy herd. I also began purchasing beef steers to background," Payne said.
Later, Payne had the opportunity to purchase a load of dairy heifers. A year after that, he had the opportunity to raise more dairy heifers with the same network of dairy heifer growers. He decided to raises dairy heifers full-time and sold his beef herd.
Payne raises the heifers, which he pays to have trucked to Knob Lick, to maturity on lush pastures of his 800-acre farm.
"I have several Michigan dairy farmers then pay to have the mature heifers trucked to Michigan, where they are used for their milk production," he said.
The costs of conversion
Despite a rising tide of alternatives, tobacco remains extremely profitable. In 1995, it was the seventh largest cash crop in the United States, worth more than $4,000 an acre. Many farmers can't afford the drop in income that trying something different would cause, and the markets of other crops are volatile by comparison. The majority of farmers will keep doing what they know until it's impossible for them to do anymore. By then, it will be virtually impossible for them to change, because they won't have the capital to do it.
As family tobacco farms give way, their likely replacement is factory farming and further relocation overseas, where environmental and labor regulations are lax. Tobacco is already notorious as an environmentally unfriendly crop. The U.S. geological survey estimates that at least 25.6 million pounds of pesticides are used on tobacco each year. Tobacco crops also rapidly deplete soil of nutrients, requiring heavy chemical fertilization in order to grow. In addition, in many countries, forests are clear-cut to fuel the curing houses.
Fishing for alternatives
Of 10 former tobacco farmers interviewed for this article, two said that the age of their curing barns and equipment was a factor in their decision to transition out of the tobacco industry and into a sustaining alternative agriculture. Jim Waite and Larry Stettenbenz of Just Right, LLC, located in Kenton County, have found ways to convert curing barns into hatcheries for sturgeon fish, which will be harvested after four to six years for their meat and caviar.
"I import the fertilized eggs from Russia, hatch the eggs in the converted curing-barns-to-aquatic-hatcheries, and raise the baby sturgeon fish until they are mature enough to sell (approximately 6 weeks old) to the former tobacco farmer, who no longer has a use for his curing barns," Waite said.
Just Right LLC helps the farmer set up the aquatic equipment to facilitate sturgeon growth and trains the farmer on how to raise the sturgeon.
"I then buy the sturgeon back from the farmer to be harvested for their meat and eggs for caviar," Waite said.
The goal should not be to save tobacco, but to save those whose livelihoods depend on tobacco. There is no single, high-value crop to replace tobacco, nor a single market channel to be created or subsidized; instead the answer lays in a more complex, yet ultimately more long-lasting, solution: the development of an agricultural infrastructure that allows farmers to grow, sell and process a wide variety of commodities other then tobacco.
The U.S. tobacco farmer needs to find alternative options in order to remain profitable and self-sustaining. Diversification is ultimately the only strategy that will result in sustainable economic development for Kentucky-family farmers who must diversify in order to survive.