Spiraling costs threaten to extinguish cigar-leaf farms in N.E.'s Tobacco Valley
Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2008-08-22
Author: Gregory B. Hladky, Globe Correspondent
Intro: Despite well-documented health concerns about tobacco use, consumption of expensive cigars began to surge in the 1990s, and demand remains high today.
But tobacco is also one of the most expensive crops to produce. Worried farmers say those costs are going up fast, raising concerns that they will not be able to fend off developers' bulldozers much longer.
The energy crisis has sent the price of diesel fuel for their tractors soaring. Propane gas used to help dry the leaves in the long tobacco sheds is way up, and organic fertilizer prices have nearly doubled in a year's time.
Farmers will have to start getting more for their crops, warned Kathi Martin, manager of H.F. Brown Inc., one of Connecticut's oldest tobacco-growing operations, "or we won't be here next year."
Growers are also struggling to find the skilled workers necessary to pick the leaves . . .
More than two-thirds of the crop comes from Connecticut, but Martin believes the unrelenting encroachment of new housing is making her state less hospitable for tobacco farmers.
"It's very farm friendly" in Massachusetts, she said.
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