PRESTONVILLE, Ky. -- Farmer Ernest "Junior" Welch plucked a reddish brown, sweet-smelling burley tobacco leaf off its hard stem and pondered Bill Clinton's scheduled visit today to Carroll County. "If he wants to talk to tobacco farmers," Mr. Welch, 47, said as his large, weathered hands tossed the leaf into a pile, "I'd have something to say to him.
"Tell him to drop by."
President Clinton will be talking tobacco during his brief visit to Carrollton, Ky., today. First he'll meet with growers, local officials and teen-ager Marissa Vaught of Carrollton at the Kentuckiana Tobacco Warehouse to talk about federal tobacco policy.
From there he'll address an assembly of about 2,000 students from Carroll, Gallatin and Trimble counties in the gym at Carroll County High School, where the topic will be reducing teen smoking. "I'm glad he's coming here, I guess," Mr. Welch said earlier this week as he and six of the people he hires -- some local, some Mexican migrant workers -- stripped the last of the 230,000 pounds of tobacco he grew this year. Stripping is the process in which the burley tobacco leaves are removed from their stalks, preparatory to being baled for sale at one of the state's many tobacco warehouses.
"But I'm a little concerned about what he is going to say," Mr. Welch continued. "It's easy to shoot at tobacco, to say we have to reduce it, get rid of it, regulate it as a drug. Until you look at families like ours. We've grown tobacco all our lives," he said. "It's what we do; it's what we love."
As in so many other small Kentucky towns, burley tobacco is king in Carroll County, a community of just under 10,000 people.
Carrollton claims seven tobacco warehouses. They are dark, damp, chilly buildings the size of a department store. The conditions are such to keep the rows and rows of burley fresh for the cigarette company buyers from North Carolina, Louisville, Maryland and Virginia that annually descend on Kentucky for the tobacco-buying season.
The markets opened in late November and close this week. About 30 million pounds of tobacco has been sold in Carrollton this season, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
Tobacco pumps about $1 billion annually into the state economy and depending on the multiplier or economic formula used, from $10 million to $40 million a year into Carroll County's economy, said County Agricultural Agent Tim Hendrick.
But with word Wednesday that the multibillion-dollar settlement with tobacco companies has fallen apart, people are "getting nervous" in Carroll County, Mr. Hendrick said.
Both he and Mr. Welch said that local businesses like truck dealerships and banks that used to take a tobacco crop as collateral are starting to back off that practice.
"I believe we're going to start seeing some of the older farmers, the people in their 50s and 60s, maybe selling out and starting to grow houses instead of tobacco," Mr. Hendrick said.
"I don't blame people, but we'll start to lose some of our green space, and the community will start to change," he said.
Lori Welch, left, and daughter Donna Meadows have gotten into the food business with Welch's Riverside Restaurant in case the family's Carrollton tobacco farm hits hard times.
(Tony Jones photo)
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Kentucky leads the nation in burley tobacco production, growing 366 million pounds last year. Virginia is next, with about 90 million pounds.
And Kentucky is second in overall tobacco production with about 400 million pounds grown, trailing only North Carolina's 585 million pounds.
Carroll County is located about 60 miles southwest of Cincinnati. Its fertile Ohio River basin gives way quickly to the rolling hills that rise along the Kentucky River as it winds south into Central Kentucky.
About 3.6 million pounds of burley was grown here last year, ranking Carroll County 43rd among Kentucky counties in tobacco production. The crop is grown in 119 of the state's 120 counties, with Pike County deep in the coal-rich mountains of Eastern Kentucky the lone exception.
Carroll County's hilly terrain makes growing just about anything other than tobacco both financially and agriculturally difficult. "We just don't have the dirt to grow any kind of produce," said grower Bob Yocum of Carroll County. "And we're not going to be able to grow corn or tomatoes or anything like that and compete with the Southern states or California."
By comparison, the county grew 100,000 pounds of corn last year, 76,000 pounds of soybeans, 21,000 pounds of hay and 2,800 pounds of alfalfa.
"Nothing else is even close to tobacco," Mr. Welch said.
On average a farmer can make up to $2,200 per acre by growing tobacco, compared to $120 an acre for corn, he said.
"I couldn't afford to raise anything else," he said. "I'd be out of business."
Mr. Welch raises a few cattle, and five years ago he and his wife, Lori, bought a restaurant in Carrollton that Mrs. Welch and the couple's daughter, Donna Meadows, operate.
"But farming, growing tobacco, is my life," Mr. Welch said in a small barn in Prestonville, which is just across the Kentucky River from Carrollton along U.S. 42.
Mr. Welch's father raised tobacco in Carroll County and his son, Ernest Jr., wants to do the same.
Out behind the barn is a pen of small ducks that Mr. Welch's grandsons, ages 7 and 4, are raising.
"They love farmin'; they love living on the farm," Mr. Welch said of his grandsons. "I just hope it's here for them.
"Look, everybody knows what smoking will do to you, but we also know what sugar, and fat, and alcohol can do. Why aren't we going after those things like we are tobacco?
"My point is, people all over this world are going to smoke. And if they are, they ought to be smoking tobacco grown in Kentucky," he said.
In addition to the pressure on tobacco from the government and from anti-smoking and health advocates, the weather played havoc with this year's crop.
The spring was wet, the summer was dry, and the fall and winter were cold. While some early burley fetched prices over $2 a pound, the highest price in recent years, the price has dropped as the quality of tobacco on the warehouse floor has diminished.
"We'll get $1.60, $1.61 a pound for this probably," Mr. Welch said of the tobacco he took to market this week. "But this is the last of it, and the worst of it. Because the spring was wet, we couldn't get it in the ground early enough.
"And because of that, it was still hanging in the barn when it should have been at the market, and it froze. This is the latest we've been stripping in a long time," he said.
Still, he looks on with pride and anticipation at the tiny, green plants pushing through the dirt in his greenhouse.
"Those little things will be this tall in about a month," Mr. Welch said, holding his hand at about mid-thigh. "And then we start all over again.
"At least for another year."
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