Underground Economy Homework

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The 2012 Census of Agriculture provides the most recent count of U.S. tobacco farms: 10,014 tobacco farms in the country using 342,932 acres to grow tobacco. Overall, there were 2.1 million farms of any type in the United States in 2012, using 914 million acres, which means that tobacco farms accounted for less than half of one percent of both the total number of U.S. farms and U.S. farm acreage. Tobacco farm revenue totaled $1.5 billion or less than one half of a percent of total U.S. farm income ($394.6 billion).

Ranked By Number of Tobacco Farms 1. Kentucky 4,530 2. North Carolina 1,682 3. Pennsylvania 1,312 4. Tennessee 935 5. Virginia 558 6. Ohio 224 7. Wisconsin 181 8. Indiana 158 9. South Carolina 136 10. Georgia 102

Ranked By Total Tobacco Acreage

1. North Carolina 167,443 2. Kentucky 87,931 3. Tennessee 23,801 4. Virginia 22,982 5. South Carolina 12,155 6. Georgia 9,882 7. Pennsylvania 9,532 8. Indiana 2,348 9. Connecticut 2,180 10. Ohio 1,864

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012 Census of Agriculture, May 2014, and earlier editions (Census is done every five years), http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/index.asp.

The 2012 Census found fewer tobacco farms and less tobacco acreage than the 2007 Census of Agriculture. The role of tobacco farming in the United States economy and in the so-called tobacco states’ economies has been shrinking rapidly for some time.1 While some of that decline has been caused by reductions in the amount of smoking in the United States, much of the reduced demand for U.S. tobacco leaf has come from U.S. cigarette companies using more foreign tobacco in the cigarettes they make and sharply reducing, if not eliminating, their cigarette exports.2

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, September 4, 2014

For more information on tobacco farming, see the Campaign’s website http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/facts_issues/fact_sheets/misc/farming/.

1 See the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids factsheet, The Shrinking Role of Tobacco Farming & Tobacco Product Manufacturing in the United States’ Economy, and similar factsheets on the role of tobacco farming and tobacco product manufacturing in each of the major tobacco states, available online at http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/facts_issues/fact_sheets/misc/farming/. 2 See, e.g., the Campaign factsheet, The Big Cigarette Companies (Not Smoking Declines) Are Hurting American Tobacco Farmers, http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0112.pdf.

TOBACCO-GROWING STATES IN THE USA