When Hugh Wells retired as Greeneville's police chief in 1977 and became a banker, Greene County had about 500 Grade-A dairies, and 22 warehouses fighting for a share of a $30 million to $35 million burley tobacco business.

Greene County also was the leading county in the state for dairy cattle, beef cattle and burley tobacco.

Today, though Greene County still leads in those categories, each of them is much smaller, Wells said in an interview.

The price of 100 pounds of milk, which was about $20 in 1977, he said, has gotten as low as $11, and farmers say the cost of producing that milk is at least $12.

"As a result, that has put the dairies into a tailspin," he said.

Greene County now has fewer than 40 dairy operations, he said.

Wells started his career as a lending officer at Greene County Bank and retired Dec. 31 at 80 as senior vice president for agricultural lending and business development.

The man who hired him, Herb Whitfield, then the president of the bank, knew that Greeneville's police chief was quite active in agricultural circles as a farmer.

Wells said Whitfield "decided he could make a lending officer out of someone familiar with agriculture issues" more easily than trying to make a lender familiar with agriculture.

As a result, Wells said he was able to learn a great deal from the professional bankers he worked side-by-side with over the years, and even now will miss that opportunity, and also miss working with people he respects.

"It was a demanding place," Wells said, but "I was proud of the bank. I'm still proud of the bank," now called GreenBank.

Whitfield's idea for turning a farmer into a banker "worked out right well, as far as I'm concerned," Wells said.

Wells and his father turned to beef cattle when an accidental poisoning wiped out their dairy herd of about 20 cows, he said.

During his 21-year career as a police officer, until his retirement as chief, Wells continued to farm, and to be active in farming circles and knowledgeable about agricultural issues.

In the 1970s, Wells said, Greene County had quite a bit of industry that was seasonal, notably the Magnavox Company of Tennessee and American Greetings Corporation plants, with layoffs that usually happened in the spring.

That worked out well for farmers, who were ready to begin planting when the annual layoffs came, he said, and the schedule "was good for the economy."

In 1977, the Burley Stablization Corporation (BSC) was still administering a price-support program for tobacco, assigning grower quotas based on projections for the following year from cigarette producers, and putting a floor under prices, guaranteeing a minimum.

When the quota and price-support program was ended by Congress five years ago, farmers were free to grow all the tobacco they wished, but they were no longer assured of a minimum, guaranteed price, Wells noted.

Now the major tobacco companies allow tobacco farmers, who make up a far smaller pool of growers, to sign a contract in which the company agrees to buy a specified amount of certain grades of tobacco at a specified price.

However, Wells said, "The price is much less than what it was under the price-support and quota system, and it's questionable as to whether it's profitable" to grow tobacco under the current system.

He noted that the BSC has purchased the former Greene Farmers Co-op warehouse here for programs yet to be spelled out in detail, and he is hopeful that the BSC purchase may mean there is still a future for locally grown tobacco, though that is uncertain.

"The future of agriculture in this community depends a lot on whether crops can be raised that are in demand -- that are profitable," Wells said.

He said that some farmers have found a market for hay and silage that they can sell to people who own a concentration of horses or cattle, and need more hay and forage crops than they can raise themselves.

Wells added, "There is still room for grain" as a crop here, including corn and soybeans, with markets and buyers in Knoxville and Jefferson City.

But farmers have to be very careful to make sure they can grow whatever they produce at a profit and find a market for it before they do, he said.

Spending more to grow than someone is willing to pay, obviously, can be costly.

"My suggestion," Wells said, is that "someone find a need for a product," and then work out a contract with a buyer willing to purchase whatever they plan to grow "at a price that could be profitable to them."

Asked if he believes a young person who has land and a little money can make a go of farming under conditions that exist today, Wells said "No, unless they come up with a specialty that they can sell above production costs."

One example of farmers who have done that, he said, is Mennonites who take what they grow and turn it into a specialty product such as jam, jelly or pickles that the farmer then sells.

A farmer who can add value to what he grows by manufacturing it into something other than just what grows, and then sell it themselves, can do well, he said, as some Mennonites have locally.

Local Mennonites have turned what they have grown into a specialty product "that they have some control over," he said. "They're their own market."

Wells said he has tried hard to provide good service to the farmers whose operating loans he has handled over the years.

"But I'm not God, and I didn't make all the people successful in agriculture," he added.