Vance County residents are trickling into the Henderson office of the Farm Service Agency to apply for their shares of the 10-year, $10.1 billion tobacco quota buyout.
Like FSA offices across the state, the outlet on Young Street is making due without the Web-based software system meant to automate the application process for the quota buyout.
Quota holders and leaf growers can sign up the old-fashioned way, filling out forms by hand. That’s what one woman was doing about 12:15 Tuesday afternoon, when she learned that she’s due $650 per year for a decade.
The buyout pays quota holders $7 per pound of 2002 quota and growers $3 per pound harvested in 2002. In return, the federal government has abolished the Depression-era allotment system, allowing anyone to grow as much tobacco as they want wherever they want but with no price guarantees.
North Carolina, the leading U.S. producer of flue-cured tobacco, is expected to collect more than $4 billion over 10 years.
Denise Hight, the Vance County executive director for the FSA, said her office was prepared for the software glitch. Although the three-month sign-up period for the buyout started Monday, Hight’s office didn’t schedule the first appointments for applications until today, for fear that the software would arrive late.
Quota holders and leaf growers need not have appointments to sign up, but the FSA encourages appointments to ensure the fastest, smoothest process possible.
Hight said Vance County has about 1,000 quota holders.
The sign-up period runs through June 17, and, unlike filing your income tax return, applying early won’t get you the money any sooner.
The first payments will go out by the end of September, Hight said, and payments in subsequent years will be in January.
“People have been patient,” she said.