Tobacco Growing in Canada

Via Freakonomics, an article, part of a series, on tobacco growing in Canada.  It seems there's an underground trade in tobacco, grown in Canada and sold to contraband manufacturers, who sell the cigarettes tax-free on First Nation (i.e., "native Americans") land.


"We" (i.e., I) usually think of tobacco as a Southern crop, grown in the Carolinas and Kentucky.  Not so, Wisconsin and Connecticut have been/still are growers of certain varieties and it turns out Ontario also grows tobacco.  And, like the U.S. but a little slower, Canada had a buyout of tobacco growers who had tobacco quotas. Three paragraphs:

"The federal government offered a controversial buyout of Ontario tobacco growers in 2009. Though most took the payments — designed to usher them out of the business — more than 200 have returned to producing tobacco through a loophole that allows them to rent their land and hire themselves out to licence holders, often their non-farming children.

The new system replaces one where farmers held tobacco quotas worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each and the Flucured Tobacco Marketing Board kept close tabs on production. With the previous regime, farmers would lose that valuable quota if caught selling tobacco on the black market, a powerful deterrent, noted Mr. Stewart. Having the new licence cancelled carries no such financial consequences.

And

"These guys [the farmers who earn big cash money] are pretty crafty," the farmer said. "You think when you talk to them they're honest and they're salt of the earth and they're good people. Not at all."