MOUNT VICTORIA, Md. — Tobacco farmer Leonard "Buddy" Rice quit smoking cigarettes 20 years ago. But he says it is going to be a lot harder to kick the habit of growing the golden weed.
But quit he will--with help from a couple of improbable sources. Come spring, as he brings his final harvest of tobacco to auction, Rice expects to receive a check paying him as much as $20,000 to stop growing the crop he has raised--or helped to raise--since he was 4 years old. It would be the first of 10 yearly payments that would help ease Rice, and as many as 1,100 other Maryland farmers, out of the tobacco business.
The money comes from the $206-billion tobacco settlement reached in late 1998 between the nation's largest tobacco companies and the 50 states. It will be funneled through the state of Maryland, whose governor, Parris N. Glendening, vowed last January to use part of its share of the windfall to close the book on "Maryland's history as a tobacco state." Over a decade, Maryland plans to use $83 million of its $4 billion in expected settlement proceeds to pay farmers like Rice to substitute other crops for tobacco.
Maryland's plan to convert a crop with state roots that date back to the 17th century is unique. Across the nation, states are planning to use their tobacco-settlement money for a broad range of programs, from anti-smoking campaigns and health-insurance expansion to bridge- and road-building and property tax relief.
In Ohio, legislators have decided to use some of the funds for law enforcement. North Dakota earmarked some of its tobacco money for flood-control projects, according to a recent report by the National Assn. of State Legislatures.
None but Maryland, however, has sought to drive tobacco cultivation out of existence entirely and to ease an entire class of farmers into new crops. As a result, some economic planners see its program as a national model of economic conversion. If it works here, said J. Philip Gottwals, an economic development consultant to the Maryland effort, it should provide lessons for other communities facing the collapse of their economic mainstays, whether shuttered military bases, court-ordered bans on logging or collapsed fisheries.
"People are interested to see if we can pull this off," Gottwals said. "It will definitely be a case study."
