Reducing Tobacco Dependence

Abstract

I appreciate you having me here today. It is quite an honor to be here. I would like to get started by first saying that I am from Greene County and that Greene County is one of the most tobacco dependent counties in the United States. As a matter of fact, it ranks second in the United States, and first in North Carolina. I would like to start by giving you a little background on our farming operations (see Figure 1). We started farming in 1975, with a 300-acre tobacco, corn and soybean farm. By the mid 1980s we had reached our peak in acreage, with about 1,000 acres of tobacco and over 4,000 acres of row crops. Today our farm has been reduced somewhat in size, but we still have around 3,000 acres of vegetables and 2,000 acres of cotton. I am not going to go over each one of these enterprises right now, because that would take up too much of my allotted time. They do, however, make an interesting story. Some things we have tried over the years have been successful, and certainly some have not been so successful. It has taken several years of trial and error to get to where we are today.