US: Tobacco Losses A ‘Catastrophe’

Source from:  Greenville Daily Reflector 10/08/2018

Hurricane Florence has destroyed an estimated 100 million to 150 million pounds of the year’s tobacco crop.

“Devastating is a good word to use for it,” said Kenneth Kelly, owner of Horizon Ltd., a tobacco warehouse in Wilson that receives tobacco from growers all over eastern North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina.

“All of the rain and all of the wind just literally beat the crop to death in the field,” said Rick Smith of Wilson-based Independent Leaf Tobacco Co.

Kelly estimates 100 million of the 430 million pounds anticipated for the 2018 crop in the country may never come to market.

“Those are just estimates, but either way it is a heck of a big number of tobacco that will never make it to market,” Kelly said.

Smith isn’t very optimistic.

“We lost 100 to 150 million pounds out of a 400 million-pound crop,” Smith said. “That’s 25 or 30 percent any way you figure it. For many years it’s going to rank as a catastrophe. It’s probably the worst year since Hurricane Fran. That was a disaster. This is by far the worst crop since ‘96.”

Kelly said some of the damage wasn’t hurricane-related, but due to generally poor weather conditions before the hurricane, the wet weather, too much rain and some dry weather early on.

“It has been a real challenge the whole season, the weather conditions and then you put the hurricane on top of it,” Kelly said.

Kelly and Smith said on farms south and southeast of Wilson in Duplin, Onslow, Lenoir and Jones counties, the tobacco was devastated immediately when the storm hit.

“They just got hammered down there,” Smith said.

About a third to a half of the national tobacco crop is sold through Wilson. Some 8,828 acres of tobacco was planted in Wilson County this year. In 2017, the value of the flue-cured leaf led all other crops with $49.2 million in sales.

“We had probably 10 to 15 inches of rain across most of the county and sustained winds for about 48 hours,” said Norman Harrell, director of the N.C. Cooperative Extension office in Wilson County.

It just seemed like it just kept raining and the wind kept blowing.

Harrell estimates 50 percent of the tobacco crop was left in the field when Florence swept through.

“That is the most valuable part of the crop. The estimates right now are that we are going to make about 65 percent of the crop, so that will be felt in our economic numbers for the year,” Harrell told the Wilson County AgriBusiness Committee on Wednesday.

Kelly noted Wilson didn’t have the devastating wind like other coastal counties but still had several days of wind that bruised the tobacco.

“When you put that with all of the rain that we had during the hurricane, it didn’t last long at all here and so it was a very negative consequence of the hurricane for sure,” Kelly said.

Smith said a lot of tobacco was lost in barns where the electricity went out.

“The biggest loss was in the field. It destroyed the crop there,” Smith said. “It was so wet that when it stopped the farmers couldn’t get in the field to try to save it. It just deteriorated in the field to the point it was not marketable anymore. I hate to use the word abandoned, but it just weren’t worth pulling, harvesting. We didn’t get the wind and rain they did down there, but still we got enough that the crop was pretty well a disaster after the storm.”

What remained on the stalk when Florence struck was the most prized leaf on the plants.

“The money is in the top of the stalk and unfortunately that is what got destroyed. They were already through down the stalk, but that tobacco doesn’t sell like it does up the stalk,” Smith said. “The most valuable tobacco is what got destroyed.”

Most farmers remember Hurricane Fran in 1996, Kelly said.

“They always relate back to that because when Fran came through here, pricing jumped through the roof on most any kind of tobacco that was left, and so people look back at that to gauge what they hope that things will do after a storm.”

But this year hasn’t seen that kind of result at all.

“There is some movement on some types of tobacco that they have a little push on since the hurricane, but overall, the pricing has not jumped and, in fact, some people are having some real issues now. Some of the primary contractors are looking for post -hurricane tobacco,” Kelly said.

“Instead of like in ‘96, there was not a surplus laying around, so the companies had to scramble to raise up the prices to try to get what they needed,” Smith said. “Well, this year, there was already a surplus out there, so this pretty well negated the surplus and put us in a bit of a deficit but not a deficit that would really cause prices to rise a lot. That being said, they did rise a little bit on the secondary market on the auctions.”

Smith wonders whether some farmers will be able to survive.

“They were working on close margins anyway, and then you have something like this. They can’t stand it,” Smith said.

Farmers are going to have reduced income with not much extra to spend.

“It is going to be a long, tough winter,” Smith said. “Hopefully next spring, if things get good, they can at least borrow enough money to be able to put another crop in the ground. Farmers are eternal optimists anyway. If not, they wouldn’t be in the business.”

Smith said morale is as low as he’s ever seen it among the growers.

“Everything has gone against them, the weather, the prices and it’s not just tobacco. Other crops, the prices are depressed. These tariffs,” Smith said. “Everything in the world that can happen to a farmer has happened in eastern North Carolina. Not one positive thing that I can think of.”  Enditem