The smell of fire against the crisp fall air is distinct. In a metal-sided barn, rows of dark tobacco hang from the rafters and are cured by a fire underneath the smoke wafting through the leaves.
While Kentucky's burley crop has declined since a federal buyout ended the tobacco price-support program, dark tobacco - used for snuff and grown primarily in Western Kentucky - has rebounded.
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Kentucky is the largest U.S. supplier of burley and dark tobacco, while North Carolina leads in total tobacco production.
Where Kentucky burley farmers produced more than 400 million pounds in the early 1990s, the current crop is forecast at 136.8 million pounds, down 15 percent from the 2009 crop.
This year's dark tobacco crop is forecast at 41.3 million pounds, down about 10 percent from last year, but still higher than the 26 million pounds seen in the early 1990s.
Kentucky's gross tobacco receipts were almost $383 million last year, compared with about $320 million in 2006, largely because of dark tobacco, said Will Snell, a University of Kentucky agricultural economist who specializes in tobacco.
Bob Lawrence, who owns L&H Farms in Trigg County with Mike Hyde, no longer grows any burley, the Kentucky tobacco used in cigarettes.
Instead, they raise both air-cured and fire-cured dark tobacco, the latter of which can involve insuring your crop against fire as well as the weather.
"To raise dark tobacco, it's got to be in your heart," Lawrence said. "I mean, you've just got to have a knack for it - and if somebody gave me the choice of raising air-cured or all fire (-cured), I would definitely raise the fire."
One reason is the price.
"This is $2.54 a pound," he said of fire-cured tobacco, while the air-cured sells for about 20 cents a pound less.
"People are struggling to make it" on burley, he said, which is being sold for around $1.80 a pound.
Another reason is that yields are better. Snell said burley averages 2,200 pounds an acre, but Lawrence saw 3,200 pounds an acre on his dark fire-cured tobacco.
"There's more management, more labor" than burley, Snell said, "but still the bottom line as every dark tobacco producer will tell you is that it's more profitable to grow dark than burley."
While cigarette consumption has declined, snuff tobacco use has been increasing steadily over the past 20 years, said UK's Snell.
Western Kentucky is in an enviable position because snuff companies "can't find that type of tobacco anywhere else in the world market, unlike cigarette-style tobacco," Snell said.
Farmers in the region, including Tennessee, have grown dark tobacco "for generation after generation," Snell said.
Lawrence said dark tobacco suits Western Kentucky for a variety of reasons.
"We have the correct type soil," he said. "We have well-drained soil. There's sinkholes at every corner of a field. That's just how it is, you know, in Western Kentucky."
L&H sells to U.S. Smokeless Tobacco, an Altria company that has a Hopkinsville plant, and Swedish Match, which has an Owensboro plant.
All of the dark tobacco is grown on contract.
Because it costs more to produce dark tobacco and because of the risk of fire-curing, Lawrence said, "nobody would want to raise any dark tobacco unless they had a contract."
Lawrence and Hyde grow almost 85 acres of dark tobacco and raise cattle. They've been farming together for almost a decade.
Some of their barns are used twice in a season, with early cut tobacco being fire cured and then followed by tobacco cut later.
The firings depend on the crop's growth. This year, Lawrence said he fired tobacco twice for periods of eight to nine days. Last year, with a wetter growing season, stalks were bigger and needed more firing.
Both Snell and Lawrence said they expect federal efforts to regulate tobacco will extend more directly to dark tobacco eventually.
"It probably will go after this," Lawrence said, "but I think they're going to concentrate on burley first. This isn't smoking and bothering the person next to you." Enditem
