Farmers feeling left out of tobacco settlement

Jesse Phillips starting harvesting tobacco when he was 15, helping his father out on the farm.

Forty years later, Phillips still raises tobacco, but he's doesn't expect to leave the family business to his children and grandchildren.Instead, Phillips and his wife, Linda, are converting some of their tobacco fields into a trailer park as they watch the value of their crop dwindle in the war against tobacco.

"It's a hard way to go. You buy land and you farm it and try to make a living on it," said Phillips, 55, at a farm show in a tobacco sales warehouse this week. "That's why we're slowly putting in trailers to offset the tobacco situation. I'm building a legacy for my two grand-daughters, and it won't be a farm."

The "tobacco situation" was on the minds of nearly everyone at the farm show as today's deadline loomed for states to accept a $206 billion settlement offered by cigarette makers.

North Carolina, the country's largest tobacco producer, has already agreed to the deal to settle health claims to avert lawsuits, as have 13 other states, including Utah. Four other states agreed to an earlier settlement.

Farmers have long complained about government regulations and the high cost of producing the crop. But in the wake of enormous settlements, increased cigarette taxes and government reductions in the amount of tobacco farmers can grow, more farmers are following Phillips' example and branching into other fields.

"We got nobody working for us," said 78-year-old Vester Boykin, a retired farmer. "You got to have somebody in Washington helping you and they're against us."

Farmers have heard health-care advocates are excited at the prospect of getting billions for their programs. They said they haven't heard a word about their fate, despite promises from politicians that farmers won't be left out.

"We aren't going to get anything," predicted Danny Blalock, with a cigar clamped in his mouth.

Blalock said tobacco is tightly controlled, from the limit on pounds a farmer can send to market to the prices cigarette companies pay at government-run sales. The farmers' costs fluctuate without regard to those controls.

"Your sales are controlled by the government," he said. "Your price is controlled. Your allotment is controlled by the government. Where are you going to go?"