Tobacco Turns Into Pork

That massive tobacco payout -- $12 billion and counting -- seems more and more like a massive bailout for major tobacco growers, rather than a reasonable way of weaning small farmers off government handouts propping up their business. The ones profitting the most? The large and medium-size growers that have been rapidly expanding in the last few years while small farmers quit. Overseas competition and antiquated quotas left over from the Depression meant we were losing ground in the world market. Now, thanks to our tax dollars going up in smoke, those companies already growing will flourish even more. Experts expect some crops -- like the flue-cured tobacco that dominates North Carolina (which alone gets $4 billion) -- to grow from 300 million pounds to 450 or even 500 million pounds.