> From: "frank theriault" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 6:23 PM, John Sessoms <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <snip> >> > The average NC farmer had a crop allotment of 50 - 75 acres for tobacco >> > on maybe a 100 - 200 acre farm. The allotment was all the tobacco the >> > farmer was permitted to plant, and would allow him to sell a certain >> > number of pounds per acre, based on the previous year's crop. So, if he >> > had a good year, and got better than expected yield, he had excess >> > tobacco he couldn't sell, had to carry over to another year AND saw his >> > poundage cut back the next year. Plus, he had to store the unsold >> > tobacco where it wouldn't rot.<snip> > > Makes our various agricultural marketing boards (Wheat and Dairy seem > to be the most-loathed by farmers) seem positively logical, > understandable and compassionate!
Maybe. OTOH, tobacco paid a lot of bills around here; kept a lot of small farmers in farming. You wouldn't get to hob-nobbing with the Rockefellers growing tobacco, but you could support a family. And "stabilization" was what made that possible; restricting output to keep the commodity price up. The tobacco companies didn't like it too much, but went along because it gave them access to adequate supplies year in year out. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
