Finicky Tobacco Buyers Pass on Most Leaf

Source from:  By Tom Murphy, Rocky Mount Telegram 09/20/2004

Tobacco buyers are being selective about the type of tobacco they want, said David Griffin, manager of Peoples Warehouse. Griffin said Thursday that while the quality of the tobacco that farmers offered for sale at the auction was good, buyers did not participate heavily in Thursday's sale. "I had hoped for more participation by major tobacco companies," Griffin said. "But the buyers want one particular kind of tobacco – overripe tips. It's the only thing they want." Peoples sold 302,383 pounds of tobacco Thursday for $576,392.20 – an average of $190.62 per hundred weight, Griffin said. The Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corp., which guarantees a support price for tobacco not purchased by tobacco companies, got 84.7 percent of the offerings, he said. On Sept. 8, Peoples sold 317,157 pounds of tobacco for $575,933.04 – an average of $181.59 per hundredweight, Griffin said. Stabilization got 68.3 percent of the offerings, he said. Griffin said rain has hurt some farmers' ability to finish harvesting their tobacco crops, but not in a devastating manner. "It hasn't hurt as much as it would have if there had been days with real hot sunshine," he said. "These cloudy days we've been experiencing kept the remaining tobacco from burning." Enditem