The Government Bought Every Tobacco Quota in Kentucky. It Never Told Anyone to Stop.
On Saturday, April 9, 1938, 177,076 burley tobacco growers voted on whether the federal government should set a marketing quota for their crop. Sixty-seven percent said yes. By 1952 the Department of Agriculture counted 304,847 farms holding a burley allotment — an average of 1.56 acres apiece, and 63 percent of them an acre or less.
Transcript
Sixty-two thousand farms
R001 Old stone wall with tobacco and tobacco barn in bluegrass region near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
In nineteen eighty-seven Kentucky had sixty-two thousand tobacco farms. Now it has twenty-six hundred. Nobody told them to stop.
R002 Burley tobacco ripening and almost ready to be cut. Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
What it did instead is on paper: a vote in nineteen thirty-eight, a hearing in nineteen ninety-three, a law in two thousand four, and a census table.
R003 Cornfield with tobacco barn in background on Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
One thing first. These negatives are black and white. The color was put on by a computer this year — a good guess, not a record.
Russell Spear's farm
R004 Old stone fence with tobacco in background. Near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Fayette County, Kentucky, July of nineteen forty. Marion Post Wolcott, for the Farm Security Administration.
D03 Old stone fence with tobacco in background. Near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Her caption: an old stone fence with tobacco in the background.
R005 Tobacco before it has been "topped" of its blossoms. In field on farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Tobacco before it has been topped of its blossoms, in a field near Lexington. Topping sends the plant's strength into the leaf instead of the seed.
R006 Tobacco before it has been "topped" of its blossoms. In field on farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same field, a step closer. This is burley — the light, air-cured leaf that the Bluegrass grew and the cigarette companies blended.
R007 Burley tobacco ripening and almost ready to be cut. Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Burley ripening and almost ready to be cut. Russell Spear's farm, near Lexington. Wolcott came back to this farm through the whole harvest.
R008 Tobacco ripening in the field by curing barn on Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Tobacco ripening in the field by the curing barn. The barn is the other half of a burley crop: the leaf cures hanging in the air for two months.
R009 Fields of tobacco with corn in background. South of Louisville, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Louisville, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
South of Louisville, the same September. Fields of tobacco with corn in the background.
R010 Fields of tobacco with corn in background. South of Louisville, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Louisville, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Tobacco and corn together, in the same frame, on the same farm. That was the arithmetic of a Kentucky farm: corn to feed the stock, tobacco to pay the bank.
Saturday, April 9, 1938
Two years before these pictures, Congress had written the arithmetic into law. Here is the form the Department of Agriculture printed for it, issued March twenty-eighth, nineteen thirty-eight.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of that year let the government set a marketing quota for burley — a ceiling on how much each farm could sell. But the farmers had to vote for it first, and by two-thirds.
The vote was held in every burley county in the country on one day. Saturday, April ninth, nineteen thirty-eight.
A Department study written seventeen years later gives the count. A hundred and seventy-seven thousand and seventy-six growers voted. Sixty-seven point one percent said yes.
They said no eight months later. A second vote in December fell short of two-thirds and there were no quotas for the nineteen thirty-nine crop. Kentucky, on its own, had voted seventy-three percent in favor.
R011 Cutting burley tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it into curling and drying barn. Russell Spears' farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The quota came back and it stayed. It was still the law in two thousand four. Every farm that grew burley for those sixty-six years grew it under a number the government wrote.
Cutting
R012 Cutting burley tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it into curing and drying barn. Russell Spear's farm, near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Cutting burley and putting it on sticks to wilt, before it goes into the curing barn. The Spear farm, September nineteen forty.
R013 Cutting burley tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it into curing and drying barn. Russell Spear's farm, near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The plant is cut at the base with a knife and speared onto a lath — the stick — five or six plants to a stick.
R014 Farmers cutting tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it to barn for drying and curing. In region between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Farmers cutting tobacco, in the region between Louisville and Lexington. Wolcott's caption does not name them.
R015 Farmers cutting tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it to barn for drying and curing. In region between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same crew. Cutting is the one job on a tobacco farm that cannot wait for anybody; a field ripens all at once.
R016 Farmers cutting tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it to barn for drying and curing. In region between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Closer. One of them, with the cut plant in his hands.
R017 Farmers cutting tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it to the barn for drying and curing. In region between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Her caption for this frame is the same sentence again: putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it to the barn for drying and curing.
R019 Burley tobacco is placed on sticks to wilt after cutting before it is taken into barn for drying and curing. Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Burley placed on sticks to wilt after cutting. The plants hang limp for a day so they will not break when they are handled.
R020 Burley tobacco is placed on sticks to wilt after cutting before it is taken into barn for drying and curing. Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The Spear field after the cutting, sticks in rows to the tree line.
R021 Burley tobacco, after it has been cut and wilted, is placed in small piles before being picked up by wagon and taken to dry and curing barn. Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
After it has been cut and wilted, the caption says, it is placed in small piles before being picked up by wagon.
1.56 acres
In nineteen fifty-two the Department of Agriculture counted the farms holding a burley allotment. Three hundred and four thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven.
R022 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Between them they held four hundred and seventy-five thousand acres. That is an average of one point five six acres of tobacco per farm. A hundred and ninety thousand of those farms — sixty-three percent — had an acre or less.
R023 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
So this is what the tobacco program protected, most of the time: a patch the size of a large garden, on a farm that also raised corn and hogs and a cow, worked by a family.
Hauling
R024 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut, to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Taking burley in from the fields after it has been cut, to dry and cure in the barn. The Spear farm again.
R025 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The wagon on its way to the barn, loaded with sticks.
R026 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same load, closer. Every stick was lifted twice by hand — once onto the wagon and once into the barn.
R027 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The wagon at the barn door.
R028 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Wolcott's caption again: taking burley in from the fields after it has been cut, to dry and cure in the barn.
R029 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The barn, from the field side. Kentucky tobacco barns are built with gaps in the siding, doors that swing open the whole length of a wall, so the air can move through the leaf.
Hanging
R030 Hanging burley tobacco in the barn to dry and cure. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Hanging burley in the barn to dry and cure. The sticks go up on tier poles, the highest first, a man on each level passing them up.
R032 Hanging burley tobacco in the barn to dry and cure. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Up in the tiers. This is the part of the work that put men in the hospital — a fall from the top tier of a tobacco barn is twenty feet onto a dirt floor.
R033 Hanging burley tobacco in the barn to dry and cure. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Her last frame in the barn. The leaf will hang here until it has cured from green to brown, and then it is stripped from the stalk, graded by hand, and tied into bundles for the warehouse floor.
R034 Tobacco on Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
October. Tobacco on Russell Spear's farm, the caption says, and nothing more. The last sticks are still out in the field.
Drought
R036 Burley tobacco, unusually small and poor crop because of drought. Tobacco farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Not every farm had that crop. Burley, unusually small and poor because of drought, on a farm near Lexington. Nineteen forty was a dry summer in the Bluegrass.
R037 Burley tobacco, usually small and poor crop because of severe drought. Tobacco barn in background on very large farm of Penn Brothers. Near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The very large farm of the Penn Brothers, near Lexington. Wolcott's caption: unusually small and poor crop because of severe drought, tobacco barn in background.
R039 Burley tobacco, unusually small and poor crop because of severe drought. Tobacco barn in background on very large farm of Pennsylvania Brothers. Near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
A quota did nothing about weather. What it did was keep the price up when the crop was good — and a farm with one and a half acres needed the price more than it needed the crop.
The mountain patches
R040 Tobacco ripening and ready for cutting on steep hillside in mountain section. Perry County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same September, a hundred miles east. Tobacco ripening and ready for cutting on a steep hillside, in the mountain section. Perry County, Kentucky.
R041 Tobacco ripening and ready for cutting on steep hillside in mountain section. Perry County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
This is the same crop the Bluegrass grew, on ground that could not be plowed with a team.
R043 Tobacco ripening and ready for cutting on steep hillside in mountain section. Perry County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The patch from the road.
R044 Mountaineers carrying sticks of cut tobacco down steep hillside to truck on road. Perry County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Mountaineers, her word, carrying sticks of cut tobacco down the steep hillside to a truck on the road.
R045 Mountaineers carrying sticks of cut tobacco down steep hillside to truck on road. Perry County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
No wagon could get to this field. The sticks came down on men's shoulders.
R047 Mountaineers near Jackson, Kentucky cutting their tobacco
Marion Post Wolcott · Jackson, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Near Jackson, in Breathitt County. Mountaineers cutting their tobacco.
R048 Tobacco, corn and soy beans planted near farm home up Frozen Creek. Near Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Frozen Creek, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Tobacco, corn and soybeans planted near a farm home up Frozen Creek. Three crops, and the tobacco was the only one of them sold for money.
R049 Homes with gardens, patches of tobacco and corn in mountain section near Hyden, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Hyden, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Homes with gardens, patches of tobacco and corn in the mountain section near Hyden, Leslie County.
R051 Homes with gardens, patches of tobacco and corn in mountain section near Hyden, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Hyden, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
And again. These are the farms in the sixty-three percent — an acre or less, and that acre paid the taxes.
R052 Tobacco on small farm in mountain region between Campton and Jackson, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Tobacco on a small farm in the mountain region between Campton and Jackson.
R053 Mountain homes along creek showing tobacco patch and corn field in Eastern Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Mountain homes along a creek, showing the tobacco patch and the corn field. Eastern Kentucky.
R055 Tobacco hung up to dry on porch of mountaineer's cabin. Near Jackson, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Jackson, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Where there was no barn, the porch was the barn. Tobacco hung up to dry on the porch of a mountaineer's cabin, near Jackson.
R056 Tobacco hung up to dry on porch of mountaineer's cabin. Near Jackson, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Jackson, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
The same cabin.
Lexington, 1993
Fifty-three years later the House Agriculture Committee came to Lexington to ask the growers about the program. October twenty-ninth, nineteen ninety-three.
The printed record runs a hundred pages. Most of it is economists and warehousemen. One witness was a farmer from Brandenburg, in Meade County, named Mattie Mack.
Her statement is on page thirty-nine.
"There is nothing that would take the place of tobacco. It is the only cash crop we have in Kentucky. Tobacco has paid for our medical care, our clothing, food — everything."
"I plow all of my tobacco. My husband works at the Olin-Mathieson chemical plant. And he works eight a.m. to eight p.m., all day long. So I run the farm."
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Farmers in front of store on Saturday afternoon in Cave City [actually Horse Cave], Kentucky]](img/R058.jpg)
R058 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Farmers in front of store on Saturday afternoon in Cave City [actually Horse Cave], Kentucky]
Marion Post Wolcott · Horse Cave, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
That is the nineteen fifty-two average farm, speaking. A cash crop of a few acres on a place where somebody also works a job in town.
Saturday
![Farmers in front of store on Saturday afternoon in Cave City [actually Horse Cave], Kentucky](img/R059.jpg)
R059 Farmers in front of store on Saturday afternoon in Cave City [actually Horse Cave], Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Horse Cave, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Wolcott had photographed those farmers too, on the only day they came to town. Farmers in front of a store on Saturday afternoon, Cave City — the Library of Congress notes it was actually Horse Cave.
R060 Farmers in town on Saturday afternoon. Russellville, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Russellville, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Farmers in town on Saturday afternoon, Russellville.
R061 Townspeople visiting while sitting in front of Old Talbott Tavern on Saturday afternoon. Bardstown, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Bardstown, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Townspeople visiting while sitting in front of the Old Talbott Tavern, Bardstown, Saturday afternoon.
R062 Farmers exchanging news and greetings on Saturday afternoon in front of courthouse. Versailles, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Versailles, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Farmers exchanging news and greetings on Saturday afternoon in front of the courthouse. Versales, Kentucky.
Title VI
Eleven years after the Lexington hearing, the program ended. It ended inside a tax bill: Title Six of the American Jobs Creation Act, signed October twenty-second, two thousand four.
Section six eleven. The marketing-quota part of the nineteen thirty-eight Act — the thing a hundred and seventy-seven thousand growers had voted on that Saturday in April — is repealed.
In exchange, the law bought the quota. Section six twenty-two: every quota holder is paid seven dollars a pound on the pounds of quota they held in two thousand two.
Section six twenty-three: whoever actually grew the tobacco is paid three dollars a pound on top of that. Ten annual payments, two thousand five through two thousand fourteen.
Section six twenty-seven: the total shall not exceed ten billion, one hundred and forty million dollars.
D02 Cutting burley tobacco and putting it on sticks to wilt before taking it into curing and drying barn. Russell Spear's farm, near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Read the title through and notice what is not in it. There is no clause that says stop growing tobacco. The money was for the quota — the right to sell at a supported price — not for the field. Anyone who wanted to keep planting could.
What the census found
The same committee held another hearing five years on. March twenty-sixth, two thousand nine.
Will Snell, an agricultural economist at the University of Kentucky, called the buyout the most significant policy event affecting Kentucky agriculture since the adoption of the federal tobacco program in the nineteen thirties.
"Census data reveals that we are down to around eight thousand farms still growing tobacco in Kentucky, which is a seventy-two percent reduction since the pre-buyout days."
"The majority of our farmers supported the buyout, and would say today that it was our best alternative at the time, but we knew ultimately it would come at a cost for some of those who attempted to stay in the industry."
The census he was quoting is a public document, and the Kentucky volume carries one table that puts the whole century on a page. Table One, Historical Highlights.
The tobacco row. Farms: sixty-one thousand nine hundred and sixty-two in nineteen eighty-seven. Twenty-nine thousand two hundred and thirty-seven in two thousand two, the last census before the buyout. Eight thousand one hundred and thirteen in two thousand seven. Two thousand six hundred and eighteen in twenty seventeen.
Now read the line under it. Pounds. Two hundred and twenty million in two thousand two. A hundred and seventy-four million in twenty seventeen. The crop fell by about a fifth. The farms fell by nine-tenths.
D01 Taking burley tobacco in from the fields after it has been cut to dry and cure in the barn. On Russell Spear's farm near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Kentucky still grows burley. It grows nearly as much as it did. It grows it on a tenth of the farms, on fields nobody photographs, and the barns on the other ninety percent are standing empty along every road in the state.
R064 Old stone wall with tobacco and tobacco barn in bluegrass region near Lexington, Kentucky
Marion Post Wolcott · Lexington, Kentucky · 1940 · Library of Congress · colorized 2026. View the original.
Every document here is a federal record and every photograph is a federal negative. The links are in the description. If your family raised tobacco, and quit, the comments are open — and the year you quit is the number nobody wrote down.
Sources
- Agricultural Adjustment Administration, *Instructions for Holding Referendum on Burley Tobacco Marketing Quotas* (38-AAA-1-C, issued March 28, 1938). USDA National Agricultural Library copy, archive.org/details/CAT31393892 - "Burley tobacco marketing quotas will be effective if two-thirds or more of the Burley tobacco farmers voting in the referendum favor them." The referendum "will be held in the county on Saturday, April 9, 1938." (p. 1)
- U.S. Department of Agriculture, *A Study of Alternative Methods for Controlling Marketings of Burley Tobacco*, report to Congress pursuant to Public Law 96, 84th Congress, transmitted Nov. 1, 1955. archive.org/details/CAT10677582 - p. 47: referendum of April 9, 1938 — "of the 177,076 growers voting 67.1 percent favored the quota." - p. 52: referendum of Dec. 17, 1938 "did not result in the two-thirds majority"; 129,123 for (59.4 percent), 88,216 against; "Kentucky voted 73.2 percent in favor." - p. 78: "The total number of farms with burley allotments was 304,847, sharing 475,000 acres or an average of 1.56 acres per farm. Of these, 190,836 or 63 percent had allotments of 1 acre or less." (1952 figures; read off the typescript scan, not the OCR.)
- *Review of the Burley Tobacco Program*, hearing before the Subcommittee on Specialty Crops and Natural Resources, House Committee on Agriculture, 103rd Cong., Lexington, Ky., Oct. 29, 1993 (Serial No. 103-46). archive.org/details/reviewofburleyto00unit - Statement of Mattie Mack, tobacco farmer, Brandenburg, Ky., pp. 39–40: "There is nothing that would take the place of tobacco. It is the only cash crop we have in Kentucky. Tobacco has paid for our medical care, our clothing, food—everything." "I plow all of my tobacco. My husband works at Olin-Mathieson chemical plant. And he works 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., all day long. So I run the farm."
- Public Law 108-357, American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, Title VI, Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004, 118 Stat. 1521–1536 (Oct. 22, 2004). govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-108publ357 - Sec. 611 repeals Part I of subtitle B of title III of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 (the marketing quotas); Sec. 622, $7.00 per pound of 2002 base quota to quota holders, paid one-tenth a year in fiscal years 2005 through 2014; Sec. 623, $3.00 per pound to producers of quota tobacco; Sec. 627, total expenditures "shall not exceed $10,140,000,000."
- *Hearing to Review Tobacco Production in the United States*, Subcommittee on Specialty Crops, Rural Development, and Foreign Agriculture, House Committee on Agriculture, 111th Cong., March 26, 2009 (Serial No. 111-4). govinfo.gov/app/details/CHRG-111hhrg51840 - Statement of Will Snell, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky, pp. 11–13: the buyout as "the most significant policy event affecting Kentucky agriculture since the adoption of the Federal tobacco program back in the 1930s"; "Census data reveals that we are down to around 8,000 farms still growing tobacco in Kentucky, which is a 72 percent reduction since the pre-buyout days"; "The majority of our farmers supported the buyout, and would say today that it was our best alternative at the time, but we knew ultimately it would come at a cost for some of those who attempted to stay in the industry."
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, *2017 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Chapter 1: Kentucky State Level Data*, Table 1, Historical Highlights (p. 8). nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2017/ - Tobacco, farms: 1987 61,962; 1992 59,373; 1997 44,967 (46,850 adjusted for coverage); 2002 29,237; 2007 8,113; 2012 4,537; 2017 2,618. Pounds: 2002 219,978,920; 2017 173,898,978. Acres: 2002 110,734; 2017 80,544.
- Photographs: Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration, Kentucky, July–October 1940 — Russell Spear's farm and the Penn Brothers' farm near Lexington (Fayette County), south of Louisville (Jefferson County), Perry County, Breathitt County (Jackson, Frozen Creek), Leslie County (Hyden), and Saturday afternoons at Horse Cave, Russellville, Bardstown and Versailles. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USF33 and LC-USF34. Federal works, public domain. loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/
- Colorization: the negatives are black and white. Color was added in 2026 with DDColor (open-source), then audited with the channel's spot-fix pass; it is a computer's guess and is not part of the record. Captions are quoted from the Library of Congress catalog records.