By Scott Miller
Staff Writer

Henry Elliott Sr. started farming tobacco when he was 14 years old, the same age at which he quit smoking it.

His father farmed. His grandfather farmed. His father died when Elliott was 6. His grandfather died four years later.

At age 14, in the eighth grade, Elliott quit school with his mother’s approval and bought land and equipment on credit. Ever since then, the Andrews resident, now 69, has made a living on tobacco. But he’s resisted the urge to smoke.

“If people want to quit, I think they should quit,” Elliott said. “If they want to smoke, that’s their business.”

It’s his business too, and recently politicians across the country have also made it theirs. Smoking is being kicked to the curb, even in South Carolina, a state partially built on a tobacco foundation.

As local smoking bans make ashtrays obsolete in restaurants and taverns, and state lawmakers mull a tax hike on a pack of cigarettes, governments are aiming to prevent their citizens from lighting up, not just in South Carolina but around the country.

The state’s tobacco industry has been the casualty of this anti-smoking movement. For three decades, possibly longer, tobacco was the state’s largest cash crop. Today, it’s No. 6, bringing in about $72 million a year, a mere 43% of the receipts it generated in 2000, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Production has been nearly cut in half since 1999. So researchers have identified new ways to use the plant.

Most notably, and perhaps ironically, the crop long blamed for causing cancer could produce pharmaceuticals to help treat cancer.

“We’re really sitting on the precipice of a revolution in biological sciences,” said Bruce Fortnum, a plant pathologist at the Clemson University Pee Dee Research and Education Center, which has been researching tobacco proteins for about five years. “There’s a lot of great stuff coming down the line.”

Sounds promising, but questions remain regarding the benefit to producers and the fiscal stability of startup companies trying to funnel tobacco pharmaceuticals to the market.

View from the field
“That’s all I ever did. That’s all my daddy ever did,” said tobacco farmer Mike Eugene Johnson of Galivants Ferry of his family’s longtime livelihood.

“That’s all I know to do is farm,” Elliott echoed.

But a dark cloud now hangs over the only way of life they’ve ever known.

In 1999, the Palmetto State planted about 39,000 acres of tobacco. By 2006, that number had slipped to 23,000, said Larry Boyleston, assistant commissioner of the S.C. Department of Agriculture.

From the early 1960s into the early 1990s, tobacco was the state’s biggest cash crop, he said. Today, tobacco trails behind chickens, nurseries, turkeys, cattle and cotton in agricultural cash receipts.

Cash receipts from tobacco dropped from $167.9 million in 2000 to $72 million in 2006. Receipts decreased significantly, by nearly 50%, after the federal “buyout” of 2004.

The federal government once set the price of tobacco crops. Only farmers who owned quotas could grow tobacco. But, saddled with expenses, the federal government ended those programs in 2004, removing its influence on price to shift the tobacco industry to the free market.

With federal restrictions out of the way, more farmers began growing tobacco. Supply exceeded demand. Market prices dropped.

“It was the pressure of supporting an industry that so many people considered harmful,” Boyleston said. “When you remove that external force of government support, then it comes down to who can make it economically viable.”  

Some tobacco farmers retired. Others began growing corn, soybeans or cotton, he said.

“A lot started growing cotton, but it’s not nearly as good as tobacco,” Boyleston said. “Tobacco was a high-value crop in its heyday.” 

Some just quit farming, Elliott said. “I’ve heard of four or five that have quit this year. Some of them just sold the equipment, and tried to find a job. They’re just trying to get by. We’ve been able to hold our own.”

He plants about 125 acres a year. That’s a small percentage of his 1,700-acre farm but about the same acreage he’s planted in past years. He also plants corn and soybeans.

“There’s still demand out there for smoking,” Elliott said.

Despite statewide declines, Johnson boosted production back up to 100 acres, after scaling back acreage following the government buyout several years ago. Most of his neighbors grow 50 to 200 acres, he said.

“The demand is back up, not in the United States, but the overseas market is up,” Johnson said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to last.”