By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

LEXINGTON, Ky. — At a time when tobacco farmers should anticipate the sales season, many are worried their crop won’t bring enough money, as the state is experiencing a third straight year of poor curing conditions.

The problem is affecting both dark and burley crops and is caused by excessive moisture creating high humidity. Typically, the state should be in the middle of the driest period of the year but that has not been the case.

The result is signs of houseburn, or barn rot, along with some instances of mold on much of the early crop. University of Kentucky (UK) college of Agriculture dark tobacco specialist Andy Bailey said as much as two-thirds of dark air-cured tobacco has at least small traces of rot, also referred to as sweat.

The good news, at least for dark air-cured growers, is the amounts are small and shouldn’t create a quality problem, once the leaf begins to sell. “A lot of the companies understand what our growing season has been like, and they expect to see some of that,” Bailey said. “Unless there’s a major problem, there should not be a major price reduction based on a single-year situation.”

Barn rot can cause leaves to fall off the stalk, as well as significant leaf weight reductions, and increase levels of undesirable chemical constituents in the cured leaf, according to information from UK.
UK experts advised growers to take measures to make the best of the situation, including keeping barn doors open as much as possible in order to dry the leaves and separating the leaves with rot before taking the crop to receiving stations. Bob Pearce, UK extension burley tobacco specialist, said this year’s burley crop had been looking good before getting to the barn.

“We had a lot of rain during the year, so (the crop) never really suffered from lack of moisture. It looked pretty good and I was happy with it going into the barn,” he said. “Since a lot of the tobacco has been in the barn, we’ve had at least two periods of a week or more where the relative humidity stayed certainly above 80 percent and probably above 90 percent the majority of the time – and it just doesn’t matter how much air is moving, at those kinds of humidity levels, it’s just not going to dry very much.”

Just how much all this will cost a farmer once they reach the selling stage depends on who they are selling to, Pearce added. Most of the mold appearing on cured tobacco right now is on the surface, which concerns some companies more than others. But with much more tobacco being grown this year without a contract, a poor-quality crop could mean a disappointing season for those who have gambled on the prospect.

“If you have an excess supply that is off-contract and it is really good-quality tobacco, then there is some reason to hope that we would be able to sell some of this, for a reasonable price in other markets,” said Pearce. “If you have poor-quality tobacco, it’s very unlikely you’re going to find anyone willing to speculate on that, or if they do, they are going to offer you pennies on the dollar.”

Just how much the quality of the crop has been affected is still not known and it will probably be a slow process of determination, said Pearce. “This is going to be, in terms of quality of the crop, a story that is going to unfold rather slowly, I think. As we begin to get into this tobacco, I think we’ll hear more and more reports of what growers are finding,” he said.

“We know the tobacco companies have said in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want anymore bright leaf, what we sold the last two years. And this crop is not going to be bright, that’s not going to be the problem. It’s going to have a darker, better color, but we do have some of these other quality issues. Until the receiving stations open, we’re not really going to know for sure how the market is going to react to those challenges.”

That “bright” tobacco was caused by drier-than-normal conditions with low humidity in the 2007 and 2008 curing seasons. “The last two years were exceptionally dry, just the opposite of this year, and the tobacco dried too quickly,” said Pearce. “Curing is really a balance between the processes that change the color and the chemistry of the leaf and the drying rate. If it dries too fast, it doesn’t cure, it just dries, so you wind up with something that is a light color. That’s what we saw the last couple of years. We’ve been going from one extreme to the other.”

The word for now is patience, said Pearce, as farmers get closer to the opening of markets across the state.

“The main thing I’m trying to get our growers to do right now is be patient,” he said. “There is a lot of pressure on them to get it stripped, with the labor situation. They want to be finished by Christmastime, before the migrant labor force leaves.” Pearce also said because of the slow curing and lateness of this crop, he is concerned producers will strip and bale tobacco too soon, causing further deterioration within the bale.