Meat farmers... meet the future - Canada's tobacco farmers battle hard times
Updated Fri. Sep. 16 2005 11:33 PM ET

Canadian Press

DELHI, Ont. -- A faint cinnamon-like aroma wafts from the barns and kilns of this southwestern Ontario town, the heart of Canada's tobacco belt.

It's harvest, and the country's tobacco farmers are reaping the rewards of four months in the fields.

But bankruptcy and depression are taking their toll on the growers, many of whom have left the family business after decades of tilling. Farmers say alcoholism and drug abuse are on the rise because of the crushing debt.

"Ask the local doctors around what kind of anxiety level farmers and their wives and their children are under," says Brian Edwards, a tobacco grower of 30 years who sold his business last year.

"There's lots of depression. Suicide is a very last resort for people . . . that's a real fear."

Mark Bannister, a tobacco farmer in nearby Vanessa, Ont., since 1980, speaks of one farmer "hitting the bottle pretty hard" and another under close watch because his family is worried he might take his life.

"This is a man now that's on 24-hour a day surveillance by his family. He's depressed. He's on antidepressants, day in, day out," he says, looking to the ground.

"People are scared."

There were more than 4,500 tobacco farms throughout Canada in the 1960s. A decade ago there were about 1,650 growers.

Today there are 680, virtually all toiling in a small stretch of land north of Lake Erie known for its natural irrigation and fertile soils that provide Canadian tobacco a distinct flavour unlike any other in the world.

"This could be our last year," says Joe Stachura, a tobacco farmer of 25 years in Delhi, a quiet town of 16,000.

"We have no idea what our future holds for us."

While the agricultural industry overall has hit hard times in recent years, tobacco farmers find themselves in an unusual dilemma all their own - growing a product that, albeit legal, has been blamed for the premature deaths of 45,000 Canadians annually.

Every province except Alberta has passed some form of smoking ban in public places such as bars and restaurants.

"What we are trying very hard to convince government of is that, as they pursue these types of aggressive policies, there has to be a balance in addressing the needs of the farmers that those types of policies are really displacing," says Fred Neukamm, chairman of the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board.

As farmers turned away from tobacco, accordingly, tobacco crops have steadily declined. In 1998, 151 million pounds were produced. This year the crop target is set for just over 85 million pounds.

Tobacco farmers in 1990 earned an average income of $79,062, according to Statistics Canada. That dropped to $57,876 in 2000.

"The bills are just getting paid," says Jason McElhone, a relatively young tobacco farmer at 32.

"It's bad when you have to take it out on your own family at home at night and then take it out on your own employees."

Aggressive federal and provincial government policies to dissuade smoking have indirectly yet increasingly encouraged tobacco companies to use cheaper foreign leaf in Canadian-made cigarettes, Bannister says.

Six years ago, six per cent of the shreds of tobacco in your typical du Maurier cigarette came from other countries such as Brazil. In 2003, that figure rose to 30 per cent.

"These companies are allowed to bring in foreign leaf which is substandard to Canadian leaf, and that's being smoked by people here," says Bannister, who has lobbied both levels of government to increase Canadian content in cigarettes sold here.

"If Canadians are going to smoke, they should be smoking only Canadian blends of tobacco."

He says tobacco grown abroad isn't as rigorously inspected as domestic tobacco, possibly exposing smokers to chemicals such as DDT, a toxic insecticide fully banned in Canada since 1989.

Currently, all Canadian tobacco farmers are required to document their use of fertilizers and the volume and type of pesticides they use.

"You can be sure that in countries like Brazil and India, there may be guidelines in place, but they're not being followed as strictly as they are here," Bannister says.

In March, Ontario set aside $50 million in a transition fund for tobacco farmers looking to get out of the business and pursue alternative crops such as beans and sweet potatoes.

But the farmers say much of the infrastructure designed for tobacco farming - namely the kilns, which cure, or essentially heat the tobacco, can't be used for any other crops.

Ontario Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky says there are farmers making strides in adapting to cultivating different and viable crops, pointing to some who have taken up sweet potato farming.

"There are really going to be two benefits," she said in an interview.

"There will be the production of sweet potatoes for consumption, and then those lower-grade potatoes will be used for the production of ethanol."

The province is pushing gas companies to ensure all gasoline contains five per cent of ethanol by 2007 to reduce greenhouse gases.

But Bannister says trying to get tobacco farmers to grow other crops will only saturate other markets.

"If, say, 400 acres of strawberries were planted here, we would ruin the strawberry industry for Canadians," he says.

"We can't be planting 10,000 more acres of tomatoes or peppers or sweet corns. Nobody makes money then."

To cope, one farmer tried his hand at a marijuana grow-operation but was quickly busted, Bannister says.

"It's come down to where if you got no way to pay the bills, you get tempted to do something illegally," Edwards says.

Bannister has discouraged his 20-year-old son Wes from taking up the family trade, given the grim outlook he has for Canada's tobacco farming business.

"The tobacco industry is the Titanic," he says, gazing out at row upon row of tobacco crops as he lights a smoke.

Here is the annual quota of tobacco crops grown in Ontario since 1998:

1998: 151 million pounds
1999: 143.3 million pounds
2000: 124 million pounds
2001: 117.1 million pounds
2002: 108.1 million pounds
2003: 94.1 million pounds
2004: 87.9 million pounds
2005: 85.3 million pounds

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