By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Today’s tobacco market, created in part by the federal quota buyout in 2004, has made growers more efficient in their production habits.

It was a must, as input and labor costs shot through the roof. But “innovation and efficiency” have become like the middle names of farmers finding ways to produce more with less is common these days.

A project funded by the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Assoc. (BTGCA) and researched by the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Agriculture is helping ease the burden a bit. The project was previewed last year as UK associate extension professor John Wilhoit worked with a couple of area producers to research an outdoor curing method through the use of pallet racks.

“The method of curing tobacco in field structures is not new. It’s something that has been done for 20 years, now,” he said. “It is usually done on various variations of some sort of wood structure. Sometimes they were wire structures to hang the sticks on.
“What the pallet rack concept does is use these snap-together steel pallet rack structures that are standard in industry and retail warehousing.”

The racks can accommodate three or five rows of tobacco on sticks. A three-row rack that’s five sections long will hold approximately one-third acre of tobacco, and a five-row rack of the same length holds around a half-acre, according to information from UK.
Wilhoit added that curing this way is about the same as tobacco cured in a barn, as spacers are used to connect adjacent racks and are sized so that the sticks hang on the steel rails much the same way they would on wooden rails in a barn.

Since 2004, the 40,000-plus tobacco farms in the state have dwindled to fewer than 8,000, with most tobacco growers increasing their production, therefore increasing their need for curing capacity. BTGCA Manager Brian Furnish, a tobacco producer, came up with the idea with co-op President Roger Quarles as a way to meet the needs of producers in a cost-effective way.

“We were trying to come up with ways to help people expand curing facilities without having to put a big investment in barns,” Furnish said. “The price of these things goes as the price of scrap steel goes. If scrap steel is cheap, then these are cheap. If scrap steel goes up, then these go up.”

He also said many of the materials used to make the pallet racks are available from companies that have gone out of business, that want to get rid of it.

“The good thing about buying this material is it will always have a value. If you finish raising tobacco and don’t want to use it anymore, you just take it apart and sell it,” he said. “It’s like putting Legos together; you just pop them together and pop them apart.”

There are some things to bear in mind for those thinking about using this method of curing. “The concept really works, but there are things we learned about it that that you can do and can’t do,” said Furnish.

“You have to be careful if you go too high because of the wind; you also have to make sure you have good footing. You can’t put them in mud and expect them to stand up. There are different issues, but they can all be addressed very easily.”

The pallet racks also work well inside existing structures, especially those not originally built for tobacco use. In fact, Furnish said a whole barn could be filled with them to store large quantities of tobacco, much in the same way traditional barns are used.

There are many different applications for the racks, explained Furnish, noting one producer uses them in a livestock barn and takes them down and stores them in a corner after his tobacco is removed, and uses the barn once again for livestock purposes.
The structures may also be placed beside the tobacco patches for quick hanging, cutting down on time spent housing and aiding in the cost of labor needed for housing. There is the safety factor to consider, as well. Climbing around in the top of a tobacco barn on shaky wooden rails can sometimes lead to accidents.

When used outdoors, the racks have to be covered with some sort of plastic covering, but there are many positives to using this method, said Furnish, adding if producers are to grow and expand their operations, curing capacity will be needed and this is much cheaper than building a barn.

Wilhoit is also researching a new tobacco-harvesting concept in which wooden rails atop wagons can be used to immediately hang sticks, and then transferred to the field structures, cutting down further on labor needs.