GLASGOW – When Ann Ferrell chose to write her doctorate dissertation on Kentucky’s burley tobacco, she thought she was going to be writing about the end of the tobacco industry.
“Honestly, I got into it thinking, ‘Oh, I’m gonna’ be documenting the end of tobacco in Kentucky,’” Ferrell said on Wednesday when she spoke at Western Kentucky University’s Glasgow campus. “Cause that’s what the media was saying.”
Ferrell, WKU associate professor of folk studies, was discussing her book, “Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century,” which was awarded the Wayland Hand Prize in 2014, an honor which is given by the history and folklore section of the American Folklore Society.
About the time that Ferrell chose this topic to research in 2004, she said the tobacco industry was seeing major changes due to the Tobacco Transition Payment Program, also known as the “tobacco buy-out.”
“This seemed like the ideal topic because there was going to be so much change in people’s lives in Kentucky,” Ferrell said, adding that a lot of her perception of the industry was greatly influenced by the media. She said she has a collection of newspaper headlines all stating that this was the end of tobacco.
“I really set out thinking that I was going to be documenting what it was like to raise your last crop of tobacco,” she said.
According to Ferrell’s research, in 1920, there were 143,599 tobacco farms in Kentucky; in 2002, there were 29,237; in 2007, 8,113; and in 2012, 4,537. The total amount of farms in Kentucky has also decreased from 270,626 in 1920, to 77,064 in 2012.
Ferrell said that the perception of raising tobacco changed in the 1950s and 1960s when health concerns started to grow. Several farmers she spoke with said they began to feel blame in the late 1990s.
“Some farmers started to feel that their neighbors and community members were seeing them very differently,” she said.
One of the farmers she spoke with said that when her and her husband got into raising tobacco, it was a reputable profession, but when they left the industry in 2002, “if you raised tobacco, you were dirt. You were contributing to the cancer.”
Ferrell said that there used to be many tobacco festivals in Kentucky, but a lot of them have tried to move away from being associated with tobacco and have since chosen to call their events “heritage” festivals.
According to Ferrell’s research, in 2012, Barren County had 126 tobacco farms; Metcalfe, 99; Monroe, 72; Hart, 132; and Warren, 37.
Although the health concerns with smoking cigarettes has dramatically risen, Ferrell said the tobacco industry is still a viable way for Kentucky farmers to make money.
Ferrell said that tobacco is a very dependable crop and the tobacco market is steady compared to other commodities.
“Obviously prices do go up and down,” she said. “But it doesn’t have the huge swings.
“You’re not gonna’ get enough to get rich, but you’re not gonna’ go broke either.”