Adding insult to injury, when the U.S. Farm Service Agency issues this year's growing restrictions Feb. 1, farmers anticipate deep additional cuts in their allocations. And they add that if someone is going to grow tobacco, it might as well be them. Tobacco is crucial to southeastern Indiana, producing a third or more of farm income in some counties. Few other crops are suited to the region's sharp hills. For most of the state, though, tobacco is of trifling consequence.
More acreage is devoted to mint and nearly as much to tomatoes and sweet corn.
But tobacco packs a wallop at the bottom line. No other legal crop is remotely as profitable. The vast majority of tobacco growers are part-timers. He frets that shrinking government allocations, or quotas, will devastate the agricultural economy near the Ohio River. The government sets the quotas to prop up prices.