North Carolina tobacco farmers are facing adversity with tariffs from China hitting their export market, a spate of bad weather hurting crop production and labor becoming harder to find, according to a report in The News and Observer.
If things continue as they are, the state’s farmers are expected to plant the smallest tobacco crop since before World War II, Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau, was quoted as saying.
The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, combined with a strong U.S. dollar, has made non-U.S. tobacco cheaper for manufacturers.
“Seventy-five percent of the tobacco grown in the state is exported abroad, with a lot of it headed to China,” Wooten said. “There are more smokers in China than there is population in the United States. It has been a growing market. But contracts have been cut to our farmers by 75 to 80 percent.”
In 2017, the state exported $162 million in tobacco to China. But last year, that number fell to $4 million, a 98 percent decline due in part to tariffs and weather.