"At one point it got kind of hostile. The local farmers, family farmers, we feel like they don't care about us." Tim Harrell is a Tobacco farmer in Tennessee.
He was inside a closed door meeting Friday in Greenville where Phillip Morris U.S.A. announced they were closing down their tobacco buying operation in east Tennessee.
According to farmer John Cavin, this will affect the local economy in several ways. "This station serviced 138 farm families that produced 6 million pounds of tobacco, that generated 10 point 5 million dollars in sales."
Cavin estimates that the area economy will lose up to 25 million dollars a year.
Phillip Morris U.S.A. spokesman Ken Garcia told me this was simply a business decision they had to make. "To better align our operations that we have to but both burley and flu cured tobacco. We have stations in Yanceyville, North Carolina and Danville, Kentucky."
Yanceyville is 5 hours from Greenville while Danville is nearly 4 hours away.
Farmers we talked to said they're going to have to now go home and make some hard decisions with their families, because once February comes this location will no longer be in operation.
John Litz is considered a big grower. Guys like him will be able to stay in business, but he believes that this move will put the smaller farmers, those with 10 acers or less, out of business. "What Phillip Morris has done is they have signed the foreclosure papers on a lot of farmers."
Litz feels like the multi-billion dollar company is cutting costs at the expense of the very ones it depends on for their product.
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