Tobacco and Truck Crops - Part 2

This is the second of two posts about a recent conversation with my dad on the topic of growing up on a small family farm near the NC and VA border.

After my dad told me that only four acres of the farm was used for tobacco, the cash crop, I asked, why - especially when they had as much as 30 acres available - why did they limit the crop to four acres? The answer surprised me: there were quotas assigned. His family was allotted four acres’ worth of output.

There was a tobacco market in Stoneville (the building was damaged by a rare tornado in the early ‘90’s, and there were also two deaths during that storm). Once the season's weather was understood and crop yields could be calculated, aerial surveys of the local farms were done to assess and confirm the production.

Then the allotments were made. His family received a four acre assignment. After a final evaluation of the amount of land under cultivation, a market representative would come to the farm, measure the area in tobacco, and cut down and destroy anything exceeding the quota – to control prices and apparently to keep the farm families on a tight – barely sustainable – budget.

In fact, the money was so tight my grandmother eventually went to work in the mills in Eden. The mills there are a story for another time, though.

I will finish on the note that during the last few years I have been going back to the area, unfortunately, mostly for funerals. Whenever I drive out to the homesteads and farms my relatives lived on all those years, the first thing that impresses me is how small the farms where – which is consistent with the story in Progressive Farmer. The second thing that I noticed is how little tobacco there is now – production has moved off shore, since smoking and tobacco use has declined so much in the US.

That land often sits idle now, waiting for sprawl from Greensboro, Charlotte, Martinsville, and even Danville to claim it for development.