New tobacco board can sue cigarette makers
Farm Products Marketing Commission appointments to run flue board for 18 months. Former chair says rapid transition was ‘not professional’
Photo: Fred Neukamm
Farm Products Marketing Commission appointments to run flue board for 18 months. Former chair says rapid transition was ‘not professional’
Photo: Fred Neukamm
There’s no happiness in tobacco country Wednesday as the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers’ Marketing Board reached a deal with the Tobacco Advisory Committee for a 23.15 million pound crop worth $45 million.
OTTERVILLE – Don’t count on a mass exodus to fields of potatoes, sweet corn or strawberries just yet but there are signs these may soon be attractive alternatives for beleaguered tobacco growers throughout Southwestern Ontario.
This week, the federal government collected fines and civil compensation from tobacco companies totaling $1.15 billion for orchestrating a cigarette smuggling operation in the 1990s, and promptly passed on a little more than $300 million to hardpressed growers and tobacco belt communities. Provincial agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky says nobody told her about the buyout and she strongly disagrees with the way it is being financed.
LANGTON – If manufacturers of a recently introduced local brand of cigarette can get into tobacco export, it will be a major boon to an industry severely battered over the years, says the new company’s president.
A hastily organized tobacco protest closed down Hwy 24, the main street of the town of Simcoe Wednesday morning in support of an unnamed farmer being pressed by his lender. The tobacco board didn't organize the protest, says chairman Linda Vandendriessche, who was happy to support it. "He's not the first and he won't be the last," Vandendriessche told Better Farming on Friday.
UPDATED Sunday July 6, 2008 6:26 a.m.
Flue Tobacco board chairperson Linda Vandendriessche welcomes the RCMP’s recently released Contraband Tobacco Enforcement Strategy to counter tobacco smuggling. But she says more attention must be paid to the farmer side of the equation.