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About 5,000 residents to receive buyout

By Sam Atkins
Published in News on October 13, 2004 2:05 PM

Forty residents in Wayne County will receive $500,000 or more spread out over the next 10 years due to the passing of the tobacco buyout.

In all, about 5,000 Wayne County residents will be receiving payments. The uses for the buyout money will likely be as varied as the amounts the farmers will receive from the U.S. government.

D. McKinley Price of D.M. Price and Sons is scheduled to receive $3.9 million spread over 10 years. He said he planned to use the money to pay off debts. His mother and father started the business in 1935. It is on U.S. 111 South in Seven Springs.

They have 100 acres of tobacco in Wayne County and 50 in Duplin County, which they own and grow most of. He said he has a lot of mixed feelings about the buyout. It will be good to have the money, but it will hurt small business badly, he said. There will be less tobacco grown and it will be in fewer hands, he added.

Lucille E. Tyson, 76, of Goldsboro is scheduled to receive around $4,400 spread over the 10 years. She said her brother-in-law, Bud, tends the tobacco crop. It is a very small amount, around 800 pounds, in the LaGrange area. Her father left it to the children when he died in 1985.

She said she does not know what she will do with the money. Her husband passed away a few months ago, and she said she will probably use it to "get things straightened out."

Dan Wallace, 68, was born and reared on a farm in Beaufort County and owns around 9,000 pounds of tobacco. He lives in Goldsboro and has been a tenant farmer on the 90-acre family farm in Beaufort County that has been farming tobacco for over 20 years. He said he is not sure if the farmer will continue farming the tobacco.

Wallace said he expects to receive about $32,000 from the buyout. He said the money will go toward education for his grandchildren, who live in the Raleigh-Garner area. Wallace is retired military and is drawing Social Security. He has run his own store for over 20 years and said he does not need the cash.

He said the buyout will cause the total value of his farm to fall. If they don't plant tobacco anymore, the farm will not be worth $35 per acre. He is glad to get the money, but the lost value of land will not be back anytime soon, he said.

Top 40 buyout recipients

Here are is the "Top 40" list of those in the county who are scheduled to receive $500,000 or more in the buyout:

(The information comes from the Environmental Working Group's Farm Subsidy Database and can be found on the Web site www.ewg.org/farm/tobaccobuyout.php.

Jon Corsiglia, spokesman with EWG, said these are the most accurate figures at this point, and the information comes from the United States Department of Agriculture. They account for those who are growers and those who are quota owners or both, he said.

These are the address that are on file, although the buyout recipient could have tobacco in other counties, he added.

The total buyout amount for Wayne is estimated to around $134 million spread over 10 years. The buyout provides payments of $7 per pound to quota holders and $3 per pound to growers. The payments are based on the 2002 quota level. )

*D. Mckinley Price, $3,886,346.51, Seven Springs

*Jerry L Price, $2,497,015.36, Seven Springs

*Rains Mill Road Ltd. Partnership, $1,791,654.89, Princeton

*Danny F Kornegay Jr., $1,680,690.31, Princeton

*C. Royce Gray, $1,635,416.19, LaGrange

*E. Carroll Jackson, $1,535,482.93, Dudley

*Newsome Farms Inc., $1,470,423.30, Fremont

*H.B. Ballance Farms Inc., $1,111,674.28, Fremont

*Randy J. Aycock, $1,087,254.41, Fremont

*D. Frank Kornegay, $1,212,715.14, Princeton

*William Dexter Jackson, $1,167,005.70, Mount Olive

*Norwood Mark Holland, $931,106, Princeton