A Modest Farmer [Bert Kelly], “Can a lowly sheep farmer afford to grow tobacco?,” The Australian Financial Review, March 16, 1979, p. 3. Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 35-36, as “Tobacco.”

Before I became a Member of Parliament, I regarded the farmers in our district as fellow farmers and referred to them as such.

But when I became a member it did not take long to refer to them as being part of the farming industry, or being more specific, as part of the wheat or wool growing industry.

This certainly sounded more pretentious than simply calling them wheatfarmers or woolgrowers, and being pretentious is a very important part of being a member of Parliament.

But now that I am back on the farm again, I find that I have reverted to thinking of myself as a wheat and sheep farmer, not as part of an industry.

I am reminded of the story of an American school mistress who was giving her class a lesson on the history of the American Indians.

When she had finished she asked: “Has anyone in the class got any Indian blood in his veins?” Little Tommy put up his hand. “How very interesting Tommy,” she gushed. “Which tribe?” “It wasn’t no tribe, ma’am,” Tommy replied, “It was just a wandering Indian!”

This tendency not to recognise that farms are worked by individual farmers has some queer side effects.

For instance, at the recent Agricultural Outlook Conference, there was some discussion about the possibility of persuading the US to remove the very damaging tariff against our wool if we were to lower our barriers against the importation of tobacco.

Some of us had heard an official attached to the US Embassy state that this was more than a possibility and, if this could be arranged, then the benefit to our woolgrowers would be considerable.

But one of our officials at the conference pretty well buried the argument when he told us that the last time this was seriously discussed, the then Minister for Trade had said sourly that he was not going to sacrifice the small tobacco industry to benefit the huge wool industry.

The enunciation of such unexceptionable sentiments was too much for the conference whose members were no doubt attracted to the picture of the gallant minister standing guard over the tiny, weak tobacco industry, and holding at bay the great strong, bullying wool industry.

I admit that even I wiped a furtive tear from my eye when the official sat down.

It was only when I had returned home and was mooching along behind a slow mob of wethers, that I realised that the minister had been talking nonsense.

The wool industry is not a great big monolithic monster but is made up of a lot of sheep farmers like Fred and me.

And it is nonsense to talk of not sacrificing the tiny tobacco industry to the huge and prosperous wool industry.

Rather we should be examining if it was worth risking the welfare of 90,000 woolgrowers to safeguard the prosperity of 1000 tobacco growers.

Last year I asked Eccles to find out what it was costing Australia in direct subsidies and excise revenue foregone to protect tobacco growing in Australia.

The most recent figures he could get were for 1972-73 and these showed that that year it cost the taxpayers $1334 for each hectare of tobacco grown in one form of subsidy or another.

That these figures were right then I do not doubt, but I cannot say if they have changed much since.

If they have, no doubt I will be quickly corrected.

Since writing about this last year, I have read a recent BAE article which says that, in addition to the assistance to the tobacco grower I have mentioned, tobacco growing is now so profitable that it has been found necessary to issue quotas to tobacco growers and if you haven’t got a quota you cannot grow the stuff.

And the BAE says that if a grower can get such a quota, the value of his property will be increased by an average of $27,000, so the right to grow tobacco is rather valuable.

The picture we have in our minds of the poor poverty stricken tobacco grower gets further blurred when you look at the BAE figures of turnover per farm.

These show that 6 per cent of the cereal/livestock farmers had a turnover of over $100,000 per farm, while the corresponding figure for tobacco growers was 5 per cent.

It would be even more interesting to see the figures for return on capital.

And fancy being paid $1,000 a hectare each year not to grow tobacco which is the idea I am promoting!

Fred is now scouring Australia, trying to buy a tobacco farm. But it has to have a quota.

I don’t think he can find the money. He is only a sheep farmer.