Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century

Introduction to Part 3

183 Introduction to Part 3 When I asked one county extension agent about public perceptions of tobacco today, he replied: If you’re asking, Ann, if a tobacco farmer in Kentucky can go to a national meeting somewhere, like you know the Community Farm Alliance or Farm Bureau, and stand up and say “I’m a tobacco farmer from Kentucky” and be proud of it— I think there has to be a little bit of stigma, that they don’t do that. As I’ve aged in this position and have been able to go to more and experience more national type meetings, or people from other places, yeah, when youthe connotation of tobacco farmer, now, is not that good wholesome, you know producing good food and fiber for the United States. In other words I think yeah there is awe’rethis is a vice. Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, the social and political meanings of tobacco have undergone extraordinary changes. As this extension agent pointed out, however, not only have the meanings of tobacco changed, but so too has the status of the tobacco farmer: there is now a “stigma.” Taken together, parts 1 and 2 of this book demonstrate diverging realities: while tobacco production continues in Kentucky, and many farmers still take pride in what they do, the social and political meanings of the crop have changed dramatically, and tobacco has been relegated to history with the label of “heritage.” The final chapters bring ethnographic research and rhetorical analysis together in order to examine two aspects of this divergence as they affect farmers : the complexities of tobacco nostalgia and the disparate meanings of “transition” following the 2004 buyout. Both are deeply shaped by the changed meanings of the crop and the identity category “tobacco farmer.” Farmers raise tobacco in a very different world as a result of these 184 rAiSing Burley ToBAcco in A new cenTury changes, and they acknowledge this in a number of ways, including direct acknowledgment of stigma and mantras of defense. Kathleen Bond, who raised tobacco with her husband and his family most of her married life, told me, “One thing that’s really changed is when we got married and people raised tobacco it was a good, honest way to make a living. And at the time that we got out [2003], if you raised tobacco, you were dirt, you know you were contributing to the cancer.” Bond contrasted tobacco farming as an “honest way to make a living” with tobacco farmers as “dirt,” suggesting Erving Goffman’s most basic definition of stigma as “spoiled identity.”1 However, tobacco stigma differs from that considered by Goffman in that the category “tobacco farmer” itself moved from respect to stigma within the lifetimes of today’s farmers. Farmers moved with it. Valerie Grigson commented, “It was a prestigious thing to be a tobacco farmer and then. Of course we had all the lawsuits and all that and everybody hates smoking now and, you know, you’re a demon if you raise tobacco.” The multiple lawsuits against tobacco manufacturers that took place in the 1990s directed a public spotlight on the practices of the tobacco industry and raised questions about who is to blame for tobacco-related illnesses, the smoker or those who make the products—a distinction that is in part dependent on whether the smoker is understood as an addict and therefore a victim or as an agent with free choice.2 Industry efforts to shift the public focus from tobacco companies to farmers in order to induce empathy and deflect criticism failed to derail anti-tobacco forces. However, these efforts helped to ensure that tobacco farmers were implicated along with tobacco companies. Ann E. Kingsolver notes that “in more polarizing moral arguments about the health effects of smoking and who is responsible for them, tobacco farmers, rather than tobacco companies, have often been portrayed as ‘evil.’”3 A survey conducted in 1995, as litigation against tobacco companies was heating up nationwide, demonstrates this shared blame. Interviews were conducted with 528 US tobacco farmers and 991 Americans in various regions of the United States who did not grow tobacco in order to ascertain attitudes about and knowledge of tobacco, tobacco farmers, and the federal tobacco program, as well as issues such as diversification and taxes. Of the 991 non-tobaccofarmer respondents, 29 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Tobacco farmers are responsible for...