Burley Tobacco Farmers Battling Drought During Crucial Leaf Curing Season in Ky., Tenn.

Source from:  CB Online 11/18/2010

This autumn has not been kind to burley tobacco farmers in Kentucky and Tennessee, the top two burley-producing states in the U.S. With some buyers beginning to make their purchases Tuesday, the season could turn out to be disappointing financially as a dry spell has hurt the quality of some leaf stored for curing before going to market. Ideally, the post-harvest curing process gradually changes long green burley tobacco leaves to a dark reddish brown tint amid cycles of dry and moist conditions. This year, the drought - combined with hot temperatures for much of the fall - left some tobacco with an undesired light tan color as the burley dried too fast in barns. That pigmentation problem, plus average yields, could result in lost income when growers take their crop to market. "It's not a good picture," said Bob Pearce, a University of Kentucky extension tobacco specialist. "It's pretty murky. A lot of them could be facing at best a break-even and at worst they could be losing on this crop." Rain fell in both states Tuesday, offering some help for tobacco producers, but "it's probably going to be too little, too late for a lot of the crop, unfortunately," Pearce said. Kentucky is the nation's top producer of burley tobacco, a common ingredient in cigarettes. In October, the USDA forecast leaf production of 185.7 million pounds across burley-producing states, down 14 percent from last year. Kentucky's production is expected to be 136.8 million pounds, 15 percent below 2009. Tennessee, which trails only Kentucky in burley production, is expected to produce 26.3 million pounds of burley this year, down about 2 percent from last year, according to the USDA. The period from August to mid-November was one of the driest on record in Kentucky in more than a century, said Tom Priddy, a UK extension agricultural meteorologist, citing preliminary data. It's the third time since 2007 that Kentucky burley growers have struggled through an autumn dry spell that complicated curing. The exception was 2009, when farmers had a fairly good crop despite a curing season that was too wet. Tobacco companies snatched up "a good bit" of drought-stressed leaf grown in 2007 and 2008, Pearce said. Whether they'll do the same, and at what price, in coming months is an uncomfortable question hanging over many growers. "There is some good tobacco out there, I just don't know how much," Pearce said. "There's some poor-quality tobacco out there. It's just how good is that in-between tobacco and whether or not we're going to be able to sell it." Most burley farmers sell leaf under contracts with tobacco companies. Altria Group Inc. division Philip Morris USA, the nation's top cigarette maker, started buying Kentucky burley on Tuesday, said company spokesman Ken Garcia. Companies can reject tobacco that doesn't meet quality specifications. "It's been a tough curing season. We depend on the weather and it's been low humidity and it's a pretty dry crop," said Barry Sims of the Highland Rim Research and Education Center in Springfield, Tenn. "We'd like for it to be darker and it's lighter than we'd like. "We're expecting the worst but hoping for the best." In Kentucky, the problem for many burley farmers didn't start until the drought hit late in the growing season and stretched into the curing process, Pearce said. Some growers tried to offset the drought by closing barn vents and spraying water on the floors to increase humidity inside the barns, Pearce said. "They've made some tremendous efforts to try to improve the quality," he said. "But it remains to be seen whether or not those efforts are going to pay off." David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Inc.-owned R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said the maker of such brands as Camel and Pall Mall has kept tabs on the weather. He said the company's approximately 1,000 contract growers in Kentucky have worked hard through a "challenging season." "We fully intend to meet our contract obligations with all of our burley growers in Kentucky," he said. Garcia, at Philip Morris USA, said the contracts set out a "pretty strict process" that take "some of the subjectivity" out of evaluating leaf delivered by its farmers. "As long as the growers meet those contractual obligations around quality, then obviously we'll honor those contracts and buy that tobacco," Garcia said. Philip Morris USA, maker of the Marlboro brand, plans to buy millions of pounds of leaf this year from thousands of Kentucky farmers, he said. Enditem