October 25, 2014
END THEM ALL:
Tobacco Farmers Lose Longtime Safety Net (EMILY MCCORD, October 24, 2014, NPR)
Tobacco growers are about to face a completely free market. This month, they'll receive their last checks from a government program meant to ease them out of a Depression-era tobacco-price-fixing system. [...]The safety net is the Transitional Tobacco Payment Program, also known as the buyout. Since the 1930s, the government regulated the tobacco market with a quota system. It limited how much a farmer could grow to control supply and demand, and farmers profited. That ended in 2004 with the $9.6 billion buyout program that paid growers yearly sums to help them adapt to the free market.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 25, 2014 6:28 AM
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