Deerfield - Shafts of sunlight filtered through the roof and sides of a century-old barn as workers hung wooden slats holding large fragrant leaves.
The leaves were bright green, the color of money, which in a sense is just what they are.
Wisconsin's tobacco harvest is under way.
Though tobacco is a tiny portion of the state's multibillion-dollar agriculture industry, the plants that will eventually end up in pouches of Red Man flourished under the cool, dry skies in south-central Wisconsin this summer.
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"This is the best tobacco crop I've ever seen," said Dennis Lund, whose family has grown tobacco since the '80s.
That's the 1880s.
As Dennis Lund and his brother Jim oversaw the last of the harvest of 44 acres earlier this month, they talked excitedly about this year's crop that managed to avoid problems that have plagued the industry in previous years: hail, tornadoes, aphids, blue mold, rust or horn worms. Like most tobacco farmers, the crop is only a small part of the Lund family's operation that includes corn, soybeans and cattle.
Wisconsin tobacco growers have reason to rejoice. With yields booming, and the price paid by companies set at $1.90 per pound this year, farmers can earn net profits of $1,000 or more per acre for tobacco compared with gross income of $800 for an acre of corn and less than $500 for soybeans, said David Fischer, the University of Wisconsin Extension's crops and soils agent for Dane County.
The reason only about 1,000 acres of tobacco were planted in Wisconsin this year by roughly 175 growers is because the crop is so labor-intensive. It must be picked by hand - small axes are used to cut the plant at its base, which means a lot of bending down. Each acre averages 12,000 plants. The leaves are hung up in storage sheds to dry throughout the fall and then stripped and packed into bales by hand.
"The only improvement is that instead of horses, we use tractors to haul it, but aside from that it hasn't changed much since the 1880s," said Dennis Lund.
The Lunds picked enough tobacco last year to fill 18 storage sheds, but this year needed 23, forcing them to ask neighbors for any available space to hang their long plants.
David Smithback, whose farm is near the Lunds', planted 5 acres this year and because of good weather was able to get his tobacco in early over the Memorial Day weekend. "We had no diseases; it's a clean crop," said Smithback.
[b]Tax impact unknown[/b]
While this year's harvest was excellent, some farmers worry about the effects of recent steep increases in state and federal tobacco taxes. Wisconsin's cigarette tax increased 75 cents last week to $2.52 per pack, making it the fifth highest in the country, while the federal tax jumped 62 cents, to $1.01 a pack, in April.
None of Wisconsin's tobacco is used for cigarettes. It's all made into chewing tobacco, which also saw an increase in state taxes to 100% of the manufacturer's wholesale price.
Fischer said it's too early to tell how farmers here will be affected by tobacco tax increases.
"Yes, there will be some impact. I don't know if it will be enough of an impact to affect production," said Fischer, adding: "Chew tobacco is gender-specific whereas smoking is gender-neutral. Sometimes with increases in price, men don't care - they'll still buy."
Tobacco acreage in Wisconsin has dwindled since its heyday at the beginning of the last century when more than 30,000 acres were filled with the thigh-high plants. Back then, some of the crop was used for cigar casings with the rest for chewing tobacco.
For whatever reason, tobacco took hold in small pockets in Dane and Rock counties as well as Grant and Lafayette with the hotspots centered near Stoughton and Viroqua. Fischer thinks it might be because those communities were populated by Norwegian settlers who grew tobacco.
This year, in addition to almost perfect growing conditions, Jim Lund noted that a labor market flooded with workers has made it easy to find people to harvest tobacco. Among the 30 seasonal laborers hired by the Lunds were out-of-work bricklayers and tradespeople.
Now that most of Wisconsin's tobacco crop is hanging in dozens of barns, farmers are turning their attention to their other crops and waiting for the leaves to dry until they turn the color of cocoa. Stripping the leaves in preparation for market traditionally starts right after the gun-deer hunting season in late November. Enditem
