MORRISVILLE, North Carolina – For more than half a century, 69-year-old Bill Upchurch has maintained the family tradition of growing tobacco on a rich patch of soil in central North Carolina.
That tradition, which started in 1861 when his great-grandfather bought the land and planted tobacco even as the Civil War raged, soon will end.
Bill’s 28-year-old son decided a few years ago he would rather be a farm policy bureaucrat in the nearby state capital of Raleigh than move back to take over the farm.
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In part, Upchurch blames the growing health lobby and resulting restrictive government regulations that his son’s future, and many other farm sons and daughters, is not in tobacco production.
“I was disappointed at first but now I’m glad he didn’t come back,” said the elder Upchurch with a drawl that betrays his family’s centuries of history in the American South.
Upchurch is one of the grand old names of North Carolina. A large state government building in Raleigh is named after a politician-cousin.
“I just don’t think the prospects are that great in tobacco for someone of my son’s age. He would not get the same living out of it I have.”
It has been a lucrative business for Bill and despite the anti-tobacco politics of the day, it still is.
“It has given me a good living,” he said. “Even now, we’re getting better prices than we ever did. Last fall, for the last crop, we were getting $1.92 a pound.”
With a 142,000 lb. quota for his 70 acres of tobacco land, that price produced a healthy gross income – more than a quarter of a million dollars U.S.
He said it costs something over $1 per lb. to produce tobacco and then broke into a smile. “Maybe I’m being too honest. Farmers are supposed to say I’m not making a cent, times are tough.”
Despite the overcast political skies, Upchurch looks forward to a good 1997 season as demand stays strong.
Rotation cycles
The crop cycle on his farm – 275 acres spread over five different blocks of land – is much like a prairie grain operation.
He grows his own seed and by early March, with North Carolina spring temperatures soaring into unusually warm ranges in the high 20s, the seeds planted in mid-February were sprouting green under plastic covers spread over a small field near his home.
The plants are transplanted to fields in late April, with rye or other small grains used as a rotation crops, and tobacco harvesting begins in late July.
Since it is still a slow, labor-intensive process, harvesting is not finished until September. Each acre yields between 2,000 and 2,400 lb. The green tobacco leaves are hung in gas-heated sheds to be dried before storage.
In October, Upchurch goes to auction to sell the crop. The state government controls production through quotas, but has nothing to do with the marketing.
“All the big companies show up at the auction house to check the quality and to bid,” he said. “It’s like it always has been.”
In many ways the lucrative North Carolina tobacco industry is little changed from the way it used to be.
Upchurch started to operate the farm while a teen, after his father died. The farm has expanded in recent years and tenant farmers have been replaced by paid employees, often Mexican.
Still, the operation of the Upchurch farm is not much different from the way Bill remembers it in his grandfather’s day.
“Granddaddy used mules, of course, and we have machines but we still pick it by hand and I still sell it at the auction,” he said on a recent Sunday afternoon, after church service had ended. “But he surely would recognize the farm. It hasn’t changed that much.”
Neither has tobacco’s place in North Carolina’s farm economy.
It has fallen to second place in cash receipts next to hogs, but tobacco remains a billion dollar industry. North Carolina still is the largest tobacco-producing state in the U.S.
“I think the glory years are over and it will never be like it was when I was my son’s age, when tobacco was king,” said Upchurch.
In those days, smoking often was a sign of affluence. Doctors advertised tobacco.
These days, a well-financed health lobby argues against tobacco use. Governments respond and now, the federal government in Washington is on the road to naming tobacco a controlled drug, with limits on advertising and a ban on sales to teens.
Government legislation
“I don’t like the idea of teenagers smoking,” said the lifelong non-smoker. “But it is a legal product and trying to stop them won’t work. I think the government is going too far.”
Still, Upchurch figures the new anti-tobacco mood gradually will undermine the industry that is a family tradition. But it will not kill the tobacco sector, he said. Exports will keep demand up and maintain the industry.
“I don’t think they’ll ever outlaw tobacco or kill the industry but I do think it will decline,” he said. “I’m not sure if I was young, I’d get into it.”
