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Tobacco Farmer Interest and Success in Income Diversification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2015

Robert H. Beach
Affiliation:
Food and Agricultural Policy Research Program, RTI International Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University
Alison Snow Jones
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC
Janet A. Tooze
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC

Abstract

As farm income from tobacco production has declined in recent years, there has been increasing interest in identifying alternative sources of income for tobacco farmers in the southern United States The recent termination of the tobacco quota program has accelerated the exit of tobacco farmers and has heightened concern regarding the availability of substitutes for tobacco production. In this study, we examine factors influencing tobacco farmers' attempts to identify profitable alternatives to tobacco, their off-farm employment behavior, and changes in acres of tobacco cultivated using survey data collected from a panel of North Carolina tobacco farmers combined with market data.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 2008

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