BRECKENRIDGE COUNTY, Ky. - Last week, New York, Hawaii and South Carolina raised their taxes on cigarettes, while Wisconsin??s indoor smoking ban started this week. With the cost of cigarettes increasing, tobacco farmers are getting shut out of their livelihood, National Public Radio reports.

This year, fewer Western Kentucky farmers planted less tobacco. "Used to be we had 3-acre patches, and now we??ve gone to 10- to 30-acre patches. You can raise as much as a tobacco company will buy from you," said Carol Hinton, agriculture extension agent for Breckenridge County.

Contributing to the decrease in tobacco farmers is the 2005 government buyout program that stopped supporting tobacco prices and did away with quotas. Farmers received a payout to be doled out over a decade.

Brandon Taul of McQuady, Kentucky, is the fourth generation to run his family??s farm and is continuing to plant tobacco, including a patch in front of his home. "I built [this house] five years ago thinking tobacco was gonna be good, and we were going to be able to make a living on it. But consumption's going down. Hopefully it??ll get better. There??s always ups and downs," he said.

With the line graph of smokers continuing to dip downward, tobacco farming is not the cash cow it once was. "I think the ones that are left still growing ?" there??s a lot of anxiety with them," said Steven Hinton, Carol Hinton??s husband, who farms tobacco with her. "The ones that got cut out ?" they??re mad."