Foundation Helps Tobacco Growers

Source from:  The Associated Press 04/18/2005

LEAF grant to boost burley crop A foundation established to help tobacco-dependent communities diversify has given a grant to researchers to help farmers outside western North Carolina grow burley tobacco. The Golden LEAF Foundation, which receives half the state's tobacco settlement, has approved a grant of $264,800 for scientists at N.C. State University to research burley production and teach farmers in the Piedmont and eastern parts of the state to cure it. Valeria Lee, Golden LEAF president, defended the grant. "Our research told us that the market is still there for burley tobacco, in particular. So it's a question not of whether it's going to be grown, but where," Lee said. "There is a market and someone's going to fill it." For more than 65 years, the federal tobacco-quota system kept burley tobacco confined mainly to the hills of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. But those geographic restrictions disappeared with the federal buyout of the quota system. Though burley is generally known as a mountain tobacco, the N.C. State effort will install curing structures and research plots at research stations near Whiteville, Kinston, Rocky Mount and Reidsville far to the east of the plant's usual environs. "It's to determine where burley can be successfully produced," said Tommy Bunn, the executive vice president of the Leaf Tobacco Exporters Association and a member of Golden LEAF's board. "The intent is to find how far it can move east. "We're not trying to move burley production out of the North Carolina mountains. We're trying to find a way to supply a market that's already out there." Burley tobacco typically accounts for about 30 percent of the leaf used in U.S. cigarette blends, while flue-cured leaf accounts for 60 percent and Asian tobacco 10 percent. With leaf prices falling after the buyout, though, many small-scale burley growers in Tennessee and Kentucky are expected to stop growing tobacco. In Kentucky, the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative predicts a 30 percent decline in the burley harvest this year. So cigarette makers are studying whether burley can be grown in Mississippi, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, as well as North Carolina. The N.C. State researchers say that Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Universal Leaf have contracted with 250 farmers in the Piedmont and coastal plain of North Carolina to grow 2.5 million pounds of burley this year worth about $3.75 million. "If production in 2005 is successful, there is the potential to expand production to 100 million pounds in the next five years, which can produce $150 million in farm income for producers in North Carolina," the researchers wrote in their grant application. Though flue-cured and burley leaf are grown in similar fashion, they are harvested and cured differently. Burley growers harvest the entire stalk of the plant, rather than one leaf position at a time. They hang the stalks to air-dry, rather than using forced hot air as flue-cured farmers do. And they strip the leaves from the stalk after curing. Loren Fisher, a professor of crop science at N.C. State, said researchers must train extension agents to work with farmers accustomed to growing flue-cured leaf. "Our tobacco growers in North Carolina are hungry to try something new and expand production," Fisher said. "You've got farmers here who are experienced at growing tobacco who have a strong desire to grow more tobacco." Endtiem