US: Tobacco Hampered by Wet Weather Early

Source from:  yahoo 08/17/2015

Tobacco farmers in the area began harvesting their crops amid concerns of a smaller yield.

Due to a number of factors, including publicity about health risks associated with smoking, the tobacco buyout that upended the federal tobacco program in 2005 and the end last year of federal payments to growers as part of the buyout, the crop no longer looms as large in Kentucky's agricultural economy as it did in the previous century.

Many growers supplement their tobacco operations with other crops.

"The growers that have decided to stay in production and get bigger are making a fairly decent profit at it," said Tommy Bale, owner of Bale Tobacco Marketing in Glasgow. "It's just a difficult job that not many people want to do."

Bale said rainy weather made it difficult for growers to grow a valuable crop this season, and he estimates the volume of crops delivered to receiving stations in the area will decrease by about 30 percent from last year.

Instead of bringing their crops to auction, growers are largely selling their crops directly to tobacco companies through contracts.

While this year's rainfall may affect the quality of the crop, it is not certain to what extent the impact will be felt in the farmer's ledger.

"Each company has their own contracts and they seem to be pretty close to last year's prices ... though they may be a little less than last year," Bale said.

While not quite the staple crop of years past, tobacco remains abundant in the state.

The 2012 Census of Agriculture, published last year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, showed that Kentucky was home to 4,530 of the country's 10,014 tobacco farms, the largest proportion by far of any state.

Kentucky's tobacco farms covered 87,931 acres of the state, with only North Carolina devoting more acreage to the crop.

Lee Robey, a grower from the Logan County community of Schochoh, said while rainfall at his farm was excessive during the first part of July, the rest of the year has been dry enough that he and some other growers near him managed to raise a decent crop this season. Enditem