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How was tobacco a monopoly? And if it were a monopoly why was it profitable to farmers instead of the monopolist squeezing the farmers?

netcan 5y ago
>How was tobacco a monopoly. Philip Morris.
monocasa 5y ago
> How was tobacco a monopoly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Toba.... > And if it were a monopoly why was it profitable to farmers instead of the monopolist squeezing the farmers? The monopolists did squeeze the farmers. It was still profitable for the farmers, but under what a fair market rate would be. Just because you're getting paid enough to keep going doesn't mean you're getting a fair rate. It's sort of like the SF tech anti poaching. No one denies that SF engineers get paid a lot. That also doesn't mean that they didn't get shafted out of thousands by a wage fixing scheme.
- megablast 5y ago
  > The monopolists did squeeze the farmers. It was still profitable for the farmers, but under what a fair market rate would be. Just because you're getting paid enough to keep going doesn't mean you're getting a fair rate. Obviously it paid better than other crops, so it is not about getting paid enough to keep going.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Enough to keep going with that crop versus others.
ksaj 5y ago
I wonder how profitable. There is a town in SW Ontario, Canada, named Tillsonburg. Up until the 80's, every other farm was a tobacco company, earning the nickname Tobaccoburg. Even Stompin' Tom Connors wrote this song about working in Tillsonburg's tobacco fields: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YouShACK-H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YouShACK-H4 (Also, what a lucky URL. They rarely spell actual words.) Since the 90's, you can drive throughout the town and surrounding area and find it very hard to find a tobacco field anywhere. You still see a lot of the old-style kilns, rarely ever a modern one, and they're nearly always in fields growing anything but tobacco. Even when there were tobacco fields everywhere, tobacco farmers highly relied on Jamaicans coming in through the Farm Labour Pool in order to make the season profitable. There were farms that didn't use the labour pool, but they were few and far between.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  The government also paid them off to get out of tobacco farming. https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2008/08/01/feds_give_farmers_300m_to_exit_tobacco_industry.html https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2008/08/01/feds_give_fa... Production went from 38m kg in 2005 to 9m kg in 2008, I don't doubt demand dropped by 74%, so someone else picked up the slack/production value and we just import from there. Another supply-focussed war on drugs failure.
  - ksaj 5y ago
    I didn't know about the cigarette smuggling convictions. Quite interesting. Out of the more than $1billion fine, it would be interesting to see how and where the money was allotted. A lot of ex-tobacco farms are now growing sweet potatoes for use in biofuel. I also saw ginseng, and I'm sure there are quite a few other crops they are working on.

netcan 5y ago

>How was tobacco a monopoly. Philip Morris.

monocasa 5y ago

> How was tobacco a monopoly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Toba.... > And if it were a monopoly why was it profitable to farmers instead of the monopolist squeezing the farmers? The monopolists did squeeze the farmers. It was still profitable for the farmers, but under what a fair market rate would be. Just because you're getting paid enough to keep going doesn't mean you're getting a fair rate. It's sort of like the SF tech anti poaching. No one denies that SF engineers get paid a lot. That also doesn't mean that they didn't get shafted out of thousands by a wage fixing scheme.

megablast 5y ago
> The monopolists did squeeze the farmers. It was still profitable for the farmers, but under what a fair market rate would be. Just because you're getting paid enough to keep going doesn't mean you're getting a fair rate. Obviously it paid better than other crops, so it is not about getting paid enough to keep going.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Enough to keep going with that crop versus others.

ksaj 5y ago

I wonder how profitable. There is a town in SW Ontario, Canada, named Tillsonburg. Up until the 80's, every other farm was a tobacco company, earning the nickname Tobaccoburg. Even Stompin' Tom Connors wrote this song about working in Tillsonburg's tobacco fields: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YouShACK-H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YouShACK-H4 (Also, what a lucky URL. They rarely spell actual words.) Since the 90's, you can drive throughout the town and surrounding area and find it very hard to find a tobacco field anywhere. You still see a lot of the old-style kilns, rarely ever a modern one, and they're nearly always in fields growing anything but tobacco. Even when there were tobacco fields everywhere, tobacco farmers highly relied on Jamaicans coming in through the Farm Labour Pool in order to make the season profitable. There were farms that didn't use the labour pool, but they were few and far between.

Scoundreller 5y ago
The government also paid them off to get out of tobacco farming. https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2008/08/01/feds_give_farmers_300m_to_exit_tobacco_industry.html https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/2008/08/01/feds_give_fa... Production went from 38m kg in 2005 to 9m kg in 2008, I don't doubt demand dropped by 74%, so someone else picked up the slack/production value and we just import from there. Another supply-focussed war on drugs failure.
- ksaj 5y ago
  I didn't know about the cigarette smuggling convictions. Quite interesting. Out of the more than $1billion fine, it would be interesting to see how and where the money was allotted. A lot of ex-tobacco farms are now growing sweet potatoes for use in biofuel. I also saw ginseng, and I'm sure there are quite a few other crops they are working on.