There’s not many tobacco growers in Southern Maryland these days, but there are some who keep plugging along.
That’s the word from Michael Phipps, an Owings farmer who didn’t take a buyout from the state in the late 1990s that was designed to ween farmers off what was known as the cash crop of the region.
Phipps notes that primarily Amish and Mennonite families are farming it in St. Mary’s.
There were a couple just across the county line in Charles County off Route 6, he said, but Charles County extension agent Alan Leslie said, “Those few farms still growing tobacco lately have been switching to other crops since Philip Morris stopped offering burley [variety] contracts a few years back. The alternative varieties of tobacco are too labor intensive and the markets are too volatile to make it work long term.”
Ben Beale, the St. Mary’s County extension agent, said there might be 30 farmers still growing tobacco in St. Mary’s County, which is down from 50 or 60 just a few years ago. Most of them are Amish with a couple of Old Order Mennonites and a few “English,” or non-Amish/Mennonite people, he said.
Beale, who has been the St. Mary’s extension agent for 22 years, noted the local farmers transitioned from Maryland 32 tobacco variety to an offshoot called Maryland 609 some years ago. Many moved to burley tobacco around 2012, but when the demand for that cigarette tobacco waned, many started growing Connecticut broadleaf tobacco for cigar wrappers about three years ago.
Phipps, who has a farm off Briscoes Turn Road and Route 4 in Owings, said he still grows the old Maryland 32, adding that he sells it to a middle man in Leola, Pa. In turn, the buyer sells it to a company in Virginia, said Phipps, who previously served a few years as Maryland Farm Bureau president.
He noted that some farmers in Pennsylvania are still growing Maryland 32.
The Connecticut broadleaf is a specialty type of tobacco that is graded to a much higher standard, Beale said, noting that it can’t have any holes, blemishes or green specks.
“It has to be handled very gingerly,” Phipps said.
The kinds of tobacco grown in Southern Maryland are air-cured as opposed to heat-cured, according to Phipps. He cuts the stalks and hangs them in a barn around the height of summer each year.
When asked why he didn’t take the buyout, which gave $1 a pound for the last three years of harvest, Phipps said, “I’ve been doing it all my life. It’s kind of in my blood.”
Today, he only grows less than an acre on his 100-acre farm, and primarily raises beef cattle and grows sweet potatoes.
Earl F. “Buddy” Hance, 66 — the Republican Calvert County commissioner president and a former state secretary of agriculture from 2009 to 2015 — said every farm in Southern Maryland pretty much grew tobacco when he was growing up.
Hance took the buyout in 2000. When he quit, he had cut back 50% from what he used to farm. “Labor was too hard to find,” he said, noting that many of the younger generation left farms for construction jobs in the 1980s.
Tobacco “really dropped off in the mid-’80s,” he said, noting there was a “bad drought” in 1983 that really hurt the crop.
Today, Hance said he still farms and grows corn, soybeans and pick-your-own strawberries.
Phipps explained that two tobacco auction warehouses were located in downtown Hughesville, along with some other places in the area.
One was owned by Gilbert O. Bowling Sr., 88, and another was owned by the Schultz family, according to Phipps. Bowling’s former building now houses the Bargain Barn at 8275 Old Leonardtown Road. Another is an antique store.
On Thursday, May 19, Bowling’s grandson, Gilbert “BJ” Bowling III, a Democratic Charles County commissioner, said he was the eighth and last generation in his family to farm tobacco.
“My father and I took the buyout,” he said, noting he then got into beef cattle on his farm in Allens Fresh.
For many, the buyout made sense, said Bowling, 42. “But it was hard for many,” he added. “It was a way of life. You could make a lot of money off a small acreage.”
He said, “The buy local, direct market for beef and pork has gone through the roof.”
He noted that a regional agricultural center, which will offer meat processing in Charlotte Hall, is on the way, and an Amish slaughterhouse is already open in the area. Both are located in Charlotte Hall in St. Mary’s County.
Twitter: @CalebSoMdNews