MD: AMISH FARMERS REAP UNEXPECTED BENEFIT FROM TOBACCO DEAL

Source: The Washington Post
Date: Wednesday, January 30, 2002
Author: Eugene L. Meyer / Washington Post Staff Writer; Page B01
URL: here

As Maryland pays out millions to discourage tobacco farming, Jacob Swarey
and his brethren say they may grow more than ever.

Being Amish, Swarey faces many restrictions: no electricity, no cars, no
cell phones and no government subsidies. When Maryland offered money to
farmers to stop growing tobacco as part of a lawsuit settlement against the
tobacco industry, Amish farmers such as Swarey had to decline.

Instead, Swarey, who raised 24 acres of tobacco last year at his farm on
the Charles-St. Mary's county line, may benefit in another way as his
competitors fade away.

"If the price gets good, between me and the boys, we might" grow more,
Swarey, 48, said . . .

Otherworldly Amish farmers such as Swarey, and Old Order Mennonites who
hold similar beliefs and also farm tobacco, have become the unintended
beneficiaries of the lawsuit that is shrinking Maryland's 300-year-old
tobacco industry. The lawyers and accountants who devised the agreement in
Maryland didn't plan it that way. But that is what appears to be happening