A turning point
By the 1980s the strain was unmistakable. In the fall of 1986 the board had to close the Aylmer exchange, one of its three.1
10 November 1988
In a debate on workplace smoking in the Ontario Legislature on 10 November 1988, Norfolk’s MPP, Mr. Miller, said that Ontario tobacco production had fallen by nearly 50 percent since 1982, and that the number of tobacco farmers had dropped from 2,500 to 1,500. He added that 80 percent of all the tobacco grown in Canada came from within 50 kilometres of Delhi.2
A thousand fewer growers
Figures as stated on 10 November 1988. He did not give a year for the earlier figure.
He also told the House that the Dibcom tobacco processing plant in Delhi had shut down a few weeks earlier, costing 25 full-time and 200 seasonal jobs in a town of 4,500.2 These are figures from a speech, and we give them as he stated them.
Restructuring
Research on Ontario’s flue-cured sector links the changes farmers faced to health concerns, falling consumption, policy and the industry’s own restructuring.3
Looking beyond tobacco
The research station had already begun to look ahead. From 1977 to 1980 it hosted a University of Guelph research programme on peanuts, and in 1981 it added a new crops programme.4 Chapter 16 picks up that thread.