ASHEVILLE - The auctioneer, with his sing-song delivery and quick recognition of buyers' signature nods and ticks, is long gone.
Even the buyers, a group of seasoned tobacco men who could discern the value of a pallet of tobacco with a quick glance and a rub of the ochre leaves, aren't there every day anymore.
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But the burley tobacco tradition still clings to life at two nondescript warehouses in Asheville's River District, despite the steep decline in local tobacco growers. Asheville's two tobacco warehouse markets, part of a tradition that dates back to the 1800s, opened this past Saturday and still draw hundreds of local farmers to sell their harvest.
"We've got 311 bales right there and about that many more to bring in," Madison County tobacco grower Jackie Gentry said Tuesday as she watched workers unload the rectangular bales at Dixie Big Burley tobacco warehouse on Craven Street. "We had a fine year. And he said the price is going to be about $1.80 a pound, and that's about 15 cents higher than last year, so that's good with me."
She was referring to Marty Owen, who operates Dixie, a family tradition going back decades. Last year, Dixie moved about 1.7 million pounds through the warehouse, and Owen is expecting about the same this year.
In tobacco's heyday-before the 2005 buyout that caused more than half of the mountains' 4,000 growers to get out of the business-local growers would bring 15 million to 16 million pounds to Owen's warehouse. As recently as two years ago, four or five buyers would come and bid on the crops.
Nationally, tobacco growing is rebounding somewhat, but in the mountains, farmers remain cautious about taking on the labor-intensive and expensive crop.
"It's good that we're here in town, but the volume is not enough anymore for a full-fledged buyers' market, where the companies to come in and buy," Owen said. "We're filling some holes."
Essentially, Owen pays the growers then sells the leaf to the tobacco companies, which have been highly enthusiastic about the quality of local burley this year, he said.
The same holds true at the other operation, Planters Tobacco Warehouse, run by the Anders family of Madison County. Last year, they bought about 600,000 pounds from mountain growers and plan to hit that number again, although it's clear that every year fewer growers plant a crop.
"It's off 40, 50, maybe even 60 percent in total number of growers," said Warren Anders, who runs the operation with his sons.
Local farmers have had a good year as far as the all-important per-acre yield goes. The dry weather actually helped reduce disease, although it did make it tougher to get moisture in the leaves as they cured in the barn this fall.
"If you get the yield, you can do all right," said Yancey County grower Billy Bryant, who was bringing in a truckload of tobacco from his nine acres of burley planted this year. "We're at 2,500 to 3,000 pounds an acre this year. Your break-even point, I'd say, is about 2,100 to 2,500."
Skyrocketing operating costs-fertilizer about doubled this past season and diesel fuel was over $4 a gallon-have contributed to many farmers getting out.
"The price of fertilizer is about to kill us," said Bryant, 42, who grows two acres of tomatoes in addition to the tobacco. "I usually put about $20,000 in the ground, between plants and fertilizer."
While local tobacco production is down, nationally it's making a comeback of sorts.
In 2005, the first year without the price-support program, production of all tobacco varieties fell 27 percent to 640 million pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The price-support program, in place since 1938, entitled license-holders to a quota of the total tobacco crop capped by the USDA each year, with a built-in bottom price.
This year, production climbed to 805 million pounds - within 10 percent of the 2004 level of 882 million pounds. That 2004 output was half the production in 1997 and a third of 30 years earlier. The bottom came in 2005, when growers produced 645 million pounds.
The recent increase has coincided with increasing consolidation of farms. Essentially, the remaining operations have gotten larger.
"We've had so many to drop out, that for the ones who stay in, there are opportunities," said Will Snell, a University of Kentucky agricultural economist.
Production of burley leaf, which accounts for about a quarter of all tobacco production in the United States, has lost about three-quarters of its growers since the buyout, Snell said. Yet some operations in states with copious flat or rolling land now cover hundreds of acres, a big undertaking when much of the work is still done by hand.
In 2004, North Carolina had nearly 26,000 farms with quota licenses to grow the more common flue-cured tobacco. While North Carolina is still the nation's top tobacco-growing state, by this year that number had dwindled to 2,500 to 3,000 farms, said Scott Bissette of the state agriculture department's tobacco marketing division.
U.S. tobacco production was valued at $1.3 billion in 2007, off from $1.75 billion in 2004, according to the USDA. Domestic cigarette sales are falling by 3 percent to 4 percent a year, a decline that has worsened since the quota system ended.
Anders and his family used to grow 100 acres of burley on their farm in Madison County, traditionally the top burley-producing county in the state. Burley grows and cures particularly well in the mountains and is prized by cigarette companies for its flavor and absorptive qualities.
"We grew about 20 (acres) this year," Anders said as he stood in the office of the Planters warehouse on Riverside Drive. "I don't know what we're going to do next year."
Gentry, 33, and her husband, J.C. Gentry, are some of those younger growers who have stuck with tobacco or even expanded their operations some. But they have ridden the market and adjusted their production, dropping from 60 acres three years ago to 50 then 40 this year.
"I'm going to grow it again next year," she said, her 10-year-old son, Koley, standing next to her in the Dixie warehouse. "But how much depends on how much fertilizer is."
Bryant does soil testing and uses fertilizer judiciously, but it still eats into his overall profit margin. Like Gentry, he's glad to see the price come up some this year, but he always would like to see it a little higher.
"I'm always fussing about the price," he said with a smile. Enditem
