Gov. asked to find new way to fund farmers here

Tobacco buyout nears end

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN While the Amish and Mennonites continue to raise tobacco, the state buyout program starts to end in two years and nothing has been found to replace the rich cash crop. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) said last week on a visit to St. Mary’s that a farmer told him, ‘‘The only thing more profitable than tobacco is marijuana and you won’t let us grow it.” He added, ‘‘You’re darn right I won’t.”

However County Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr. (D) asked the governor if state funds used for the tobacco buyout could be used to buy farmlands to keep them out of the hands of developers. There are 41 people on a list waiting for offers from the state to preserve their lands.

‘‘I’m glad to take a look at that,” O’Malley said.

Landowners in Southern Maryland get $7.5 million a year, all for not growing tobacco, funded by a cigarette restitution fund that comes from the settlement of a lawsuit against tobacco companies.

There are 288 landowners receiving those payments in St. Mary’s, according to the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission. When the program starts to end in two years, that money should be used for land preservation, said Donna Sasscer, St. Mary’s County agriculture specialist.

There are other needs too that could be funded, Mattingly said Friday. ‘‘They could use it to help subsidize the increased cost of fuel in farming today,” he said.

Nothing that sprouts from the ground has been found that brings in the money that tobacco did. ‘‘They haven’t done anything with the transition from tobacco,” he said.

‘‘We didn’t find that magic crop as of yet,” Sasscer said. But when a tobacco alternative is found, the land has to be available, and not paved over with a subdivision, she said.

Some local farmers are making forays into growing grapes to make wine, some are looking at catnip and others focus on growing local produce.

‘‘We’re not done,” she said. When the buyout program is over, the money involved is ‘‘going to be needed more in the future than it ever was.”

Corn can’t fill the void. Despite shortages in corn because of its alternative use as a biofuel, corn needs too much acreage to be profitable in Southern Maryland.

Sasscer used an example of a 100-acre farm, yielding 150 bushels of corn an acre. That’s 15,000 bushels. Right now a bushel can fetch $7 and that would total $105,000, but that doesn’t calculate the one-time cost of the $150,000 combine to harvest the corn or the continuing cost of the fertilizer and fuel.

Tobacco doesn’t need anywhere as much land.

The Amish and Mennonites still grow tobacco in St. Mary’s of the burley variety which goes into cigarettes.

Those who participated in the buyout may not grow tobacco on their land ever again.

‘‘They signed a personal covenant. As long as they own that land, they cannot grow tobacco on that land,” Sasscer said. If the property gets a new owner though, that changes the rules.

There is good demand and good prices for burley tobacco, but she said, ‘‘I don’t foresee people going back to raising tobacco.”