US Tobacco Cooperative, Inc., is pleased to announce that Jimmy Hill was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors on May 9, 2013. He succeeds Albert Johnson, who served as Chairman since 2005.
Jimmy has been a member of US Tobacco Cooperative’s Board of Directors for more than twenty years as the Public Director. He has extensive credentials in farming and in business. He is the President and Co‐Manager of Tull Hill Farms, a large family farm operation in Lenoir, Greene and Pitt Counties. Prior to settling down to help run the family farm, he was employed by the North Carolina Farm Bureau, British American Tobacco Company and Philip Morris International Tobacco Company. He and his family spent ten years in South America, working in Venezuela, Argentina and Columbia.
In addition to serving on the Board of US Tobacco Cooperative, Jimmy has been extremely active on numerous boards. He currently serves on the Board of the Little Bank of Kinston and is Chairman of their Audit Committee. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Growers Association and served for eight years on the Board of Lenoir Memorial Hospital.
Jimmy has been the recipient of a number of awards recognizing his lifetime of achievement and contributions to agriculture and his community. In 2006, he was presented with the Outstanding Alumnus Award by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University. In 2009, he was Lenoir County’s Citizen of the Year.
US Tobacco Cooperative is the largest tobacco cooperative in the United States, with over 900 member-growers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Through its members, it contracts, buys, processes and markets the finest flue cured tobacco in the world. In 2010, it was named as North Carolina’s Exporter of the Year. Since the end of the Federal Tobacco Program, it has expanded its operations to include six consumer brands and contract manufacturing. Today, the company has 17 locations in Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. For the past three years, in addition to paying growers highly competitive prices for tobacco, it has declared patronage dividends to its members based on their activity with the Cooperative.