Latest Blow To Burley Farmers Comes From The North

BRISTOL, Va. – Kevin Leonard has dealt with a heap of problems in the 40-plus years he’s been growing burley tobacco on his Rich Valley Road farm just outside the city limits.

First, there’s the weather: In recent years Leonard’s farm has been bone dry due to an ongoing drought; but this spring there was so much rain his latest crop was flooded within weeks of being planted.

Then there’s the escalating price of fuel and fertilizer, which he said comes a time when the U.S. demand for cigarettes is dropping.

He’s also got the government to deal with: While nobody really knows the hoops the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will require tobacco farmers and cigarette manufacturers to jump through, Leonard said he’s certain it will bring more taxes and tighter controls on cigarettes. The federal agency gained regulatory authority over the industry in a law signed Monday by President Barack Obama.

The latest blow comes from the north, as burley tobacco farmers growing crops on this side of the Appalachian Mountains add a bill in the Canadian Parliament to the long list of obstacles complicating their lives.

“Everything we’ve got going on now just seems to be picking on tobacco farmers,” Leonard said. “We’re just trying to make a living here. Tobacco has paid for a lot of things, put a lot of kids through college and now everyone’s cutting into it.”

Last week, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passed a bill that tobacco advocates in three states claim would single-handedly wipe out that country’s market for burley tobacco, a variety commonly blended with other types of tobacco and laced with flavors to smooth its harsh taste.

Known as C-32, the Canadian “Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act” seeks to ban the sale and production of flavored cigarettes and cigars.

The Canadian bill’s supporters claim C-32 would prevent the production of candy- or fruit-flavored mini-cigars or cigarillos that are targeted at children. During 2007, about 25 percent of that country’s 15- to 17-year-olds smoked one of these mini-cigars, said Colin Carrie, parliamentary secretary for Canada’s minister of health.

“By amending the Tobacco Act [with C-32] we can help prevent more young people from experimenting with an addictive substance,” Carrie said as he talked about the bill before it passed in the House of Commons on June 17.

But the legislation now making its way through the Canadian Senate is kicking up a flurry of protests from tobacco advocates who claim it would wipe out the Canadian market for burley. And that could be disastrous for Appalachian tobacco farmers, said Tony Banks, assistant director of the Virginia Farm Bureau’s commodity marketing department.

“This is one more market that could be closed and tobacco farmers can’t afford to lose one more market,” Banks said Monday. His agency is one of many farm groups in Virginia and Tennessee leading the fight to prevent C-32 from becoming law.

Burley tobacco is typically hung in a barn or air-cured for two to three months before the crop is taken to market and used in cigarettes and pipe blends. Because the variety has almost no natural sugars, it produces a very dry, harsher aroma when it burns.

While most of the burley tobacco grown in the U.S. comes from Central Kentucky, the plant also can be found on farms in East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina. Last year, those regions produced 10.6 million pounds of burley tobacco or about 5.3 percent of the total U.S. crop, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Combined, farmers in Virginia’s Lee, Scott and Washington counties produced 1.9 million pounds of the crop last year. Greene County, Tenn., farmers grew another 1.2 million pounds, according to the USDA.

Banks said burley tobacco is often mixed with smoother Turkish and flue-cured tobacco varieties to make what Canadians call “American-blend” cigarettes. Additionally, to lessen burley’s harsh taste, chemical flavorings are added to those cigarettes. That’s why farm advocates are worried about C-32’s ban.

“The bottom line is the legislation has been written too broadly and is threatening to impose far reaching, negative implications on burley growers,” said George Marks, president of the Burley Stabilization Corp. in Knoxville, Tenn.

Marks listed a few of those consequences in a news statement his agency released June 10. The legislation would force Canadian tobacco manufacturers to make only cigarettes that did not use flavorings, so it would wipe out that country’s market for burley tobacco. It also would prevent American tobacco companies from using burley tobacco in any cigarette brands they wanted to sell on the Canadian market.

But what Marks fears most is the possibility that C-32 might inspire other countries to draft similar flavoring bans. Marks said this could be disastrous given that the U.S. exports 70 percent to 80 percent of its burley crop each year.

“No less than the future of the burley tobacco growing industry is at stake,” Marks said. “If other countries follow Canada’s lead, the only market for American-style tobacco products will be nonexistent outside the U.S.”

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