Tobacco used to be king in Kentucky; now farmers worry their way of life is dying

About 30 years ago, tobacco was king in Kentucky agriculture, but thanks to declining rates of smoking, overseas competition, and increasing rates of vape and e-cigarette usage, the crop is scarce now, and the tobacco farmers still hanging on worry their way of life is dying, Liam Niemeyer reports for the Kentucky Lantern. 

In the 1990s, almost 60,000 Kentucky farms were growing tobacco, but that number has plummeted to less than 1,000 now, Niemeyer reports. In Clark County alone, 700 of the 962 farms in the county grew tobacco in 1978. There are less than 10 tobacco growers left. Farmers like Kenneth Anderson, who now leases his land to a much younger tobacco farmer, "wonder what’s been lost — community, culture and learned practices and knowledge handed down by generations — as the number of tobacco farmers continues to dwindle in the state." 

Niemeyer reports that perhaps the final death nell for the crop came in 2004 when Congress ended "the federal price support program for tobacco farmers that had been in place since the Great Depression." Farmers received $9 billion in buyout payments at the time; Kentucky farmers got $2.5 billion of that. 

University of Kentucky agriculture economist Will Snell said "the roughly 20 years since the buyout in Kentucky agriculture" has been "the largest 'structural change of any ag economy of any state.'" Kentucky lost 80% of its tobacco market share and about 90% of its tobacco farmers from the shift.

The farmers lament not just the business side of tobacco farming, but the loss of culture that comes with the shifts, Niemeyer reports. Eighty-year-old Bath County farmer Robert Bach "still keeps a few burley tobacco plants growing in his backyard garden, even though his wife says they take up too much room," he writes. "'It’s just part of Kentucky history. It’s just it’s hard to give history up for me anyway.'"