MADISON — Darrell Smith, a 66-year-old tobacco farmer in Jefferson County, remembers when the opening day to bid on the local tobacco crop in late November meant a city-wide celebration in Madison.
Politicians, local officials and city residents all gathered at the three large tobacco warehouses up until the late 1990s to watch the crop be auctioned off to cigarette manufacturers and independent leaf dealers. The school band performed festive tunes for the occasion.
“Tobacco was the lifeblood for a lot of people,” Smith said. “You didn’t have a lot, but it’s what paid the bills.”
But today, those warehouses have all been demolished or repurposed for other uses — and the crop that once blanketed the southern Indiana landscape has all but disappeared.
For more than a century, thousands of farmers across Indiana grew burley tobacco, the main variety used in cigarettes. Indiana was known for its superior quality leaf called “Prize Hoosier State Burley.”
In 1997, growers in 37 counties planted 8,900 acres that produced 18 million pounds of the crop, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Census. That ranked Indiana 8th in the nation for tobacco production.
But just 30 years later, only around 25 farms remain. Most are located in and around Jefferson County. In 2022, the state’s crop totaled just 933,000 pounds, according to the most recent USDA Census.
Now, Smith said, Indiana tobacco is facing extinction. Over the coming years, shrinking demand, worker shortages and the labor-intensive harvesting process will continue to push more farmers away from the crop, he said.
“I would say that it’s on a dire, dead-end street right now,” Smith said.
The beginning of the end
The biggest hit to growers came in 2004, when lawmakers ended the Federal Tobacco Program first passed in 1938.
The program set strict limits on how much farmers could grow and sell to ensure tobacco prices remained steady. The government stepped in to ensure farmers didn’t lose money if market prices fell too low.
The setup made it viable for small family farms to grow just a few acres of tobacco and still earn a profit, explained Lonnie Mason, a retired 80-year-old Purdue Extension employee who worked with tobacco farmers for over 40 years.
Without the program subsidies, many small operations found tobacco too risky and abandoned the crop, Mason said. Larger operations increased their production in order to get direct contracts with major tobacco companies like Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds.
Smith said he increased his tobacco crop from around 25 acres to 45 acres after the government-mandated growth limits were lifted. He sells directly to the major tobacco companies.
Today, plummeting tobacco use is the main reason for the shrinking demand. Long-term smoking rates have fallen from 43% in 1965 to 12% in 2022. The rate of high school smokers fell from 36% in 1997 to 4% in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I don’t use tobacco,” Smith said. “But I did use it to put my kids through college.”
Challenges and obstacles
Smith has been farming tobacco since he was a kid. His dad grew the crop and raised cattle, and he remembers taking half days off school when he was a teenager to help out on the farm.
When his father died in 1989, Smith took over the operation and worked winters as a floor manager at one of the tobacco warehouses in Madison. He also raises cattle and grows hemp and hay.
Making money off tobacco was easy in those days, Smith said. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep his operation going as demand continues to drop and tobacco companies import more of it from overseas.
One of the biggest issues is finding workers. The process of cultivating tobacco hasn’t changed much since Smith was a kid, and it remains one of the most labor-intensive crops in the world.
Just one acre contains over 7,000 tobacco plants, all of which are harvested by hand, placed on special sticks and hung up in barns to cure. A month or two later, workers take down the sticks, strip all the leaves by hand and put them in a compressor to create 600-pound tobacco bales.
Since 2019, Smith has given up trying to find local workers and exclusively depends on Mexican migrant labor to help plant and harvest the crop.
“Right now, if my guys tell me in January they won’t be back next year, I’m done,” he said. “That’s just where I’m at.”
The decline of tobacco also means it’s virtually impossible to buy or find the equipment needed to grow and harvest it. Smith said the wooden sticks used to hang tobacco are no longer made in Indiana. He still uses a sprayer from the 1980s to apply fertilizer and pesticides.
Sky-high diesel and fertilizer prices have also made it difficult. Smith drives six hours round trip to deliver his crop to processing facilities in Kentucky. Less than 30 years ago, that only required a roughly 40-minute round trip to one of the warehouses in Madison.
(Above) Darrell Smith holds a photo from opening day of the tobacco market at a warehouse in Jefferson County, in 1989. Smith’s father, Walter Smith (pictured second from the left with glasses), brought his tobacco to the market to be bid on. Smith also worked as a floor manager at the warehouse.
A tradition ends
Those obstacles have all but guaranteed that Smith’s three kids won’t continue to grow tobacco when he retires. He said they all have good-paying jobs and have no interest in a crop that requires around 100 man-hours per acre.
“I mean, you’re not going to come from being a pipe fitter or a lineman and come back and grow this,” he said.
Mason, the retired Purdue Extension worker, said it’s been sad to watch the deep-rooted tobacco culture disappear from Indiana. He remembers when families looked forward to gathering together for the tobacco harvest and the opening-day-sale celebrations in Madison.
Smith said an 85-year-old neighbor whose family once grew tobacco still helps him strip the leaves after harvest just to keep up a warmly remembered tradition.
Now, Mason anticipates that, over the next 20 years, the remaining 25 farms still growing tobacco will eventually give up on the crop while a few larger growers stay in the business.
“There might be a couple guys that hang on because they got kids to take over, but there won’t be but two or three left,” he said.
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FPI News reporter Carson Gerber covers pressing issues throughout the state and how local communities are tackling those challenges. Reach him at 756-204-4250 or carson.gerber@fpinews.org.
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