Tobacco continues to fade into memories

HALEY PAYNE ROBERTS
MCO Senior Staff Writer

Moore County is rich with farm land, fueled by the hardworking farmers that dedicate themselves to the careful raising of our greatest resources. Farmland consumes the hills of Lynchburg, showing the fruitfulness of their labor. Yet, there is a once-precious crop slowly being lost to time – tobacco.

Larry Moorehead knows his fair share about tobacco, having been immersed in it as a farmer himself and as the UT Extension Agent for 46 years.

“In the 1950s, there would be a tobacco acreage allotment attached to farms. More farms were paid for then with tobacco than with any other crop in the county,” Moorehead said. “My daddy told me not to buy a farm that wasn’t part of the tobacco program.”

Moorehead explained that a lot of kids raised money for their college tuition through tobacco, including his own. “It was mostly gifted at the time because people didn’t want to fool with it,” he said. “That’s how my kids paid to go to college.”

However, tobacco cultivation has significantly dwindled over the years as stricter government regulations and major companies have come into play. In the early 2000s, the tobacco program was halted, and farmers had to get contracts from tobacco companies to sell the crop.

“Tobacco brought less last year than it brought in 2000. Now, you have to meet a pound quota rather than an acreage requirement,” Moorehead noted.

Gone are the days when high school kids worked long, hot hours during the harvest to earn spending money. Folks today have long forgotten tobacco barns, stakes, and other tools used to harvest the annual crop. Even though its time has passed, tobacco still holds an important part of what makes Moore County and other rural Southern areas unique.