LEAF NEWS
Heavy rains beginning in September wreaked havoc on this Bluegrass field and many others in Kentucky.
UNITED STATES Can American farmers fill the needs of its leaf customers? RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA—The
pressing question in American farming circles as November began was, will this country be able to fill the needs of buyers who depend on it? The weather in tobacco areas from mid-September on made this a very realistic question. Heavy and persistent rains in Virginia and western North Carolina turned tobacco fields in those areas into a muck. The results were even worse for eastern North and South Carolina when Hurricane Florence blew in in mid-September, drowning some tobacco and whipping much of the rest with savage winds. Farmers were only arguably recovered when Hurricane Matthew arrived in early October. The general damage again was mainly in the eastern Caro-
linas but since most of the tobacco in those areas was harvested or abandoned by that time, Matthew had little effect there. But the heavy rains it created proved to be a problem in the N.C. and Virginia Piedmont, where tobacco was still in the field. A report on the effect of the storms of later 2018. FLUE-CURED—The estimates of loss in N.C. vary widely among the various observers, with the leader of the N.C. Tobacco Growers Association placing it at 128 million pounds. But as the weeks padded that was generally regarded as a “top” figure, with 100 to 110 million pounds seeming a more realistic projection. Almost all of that came in the Eastern Belt and most was the result of Florence. But Michael had a catastrophic effect in the Piedmont, where some
28 TOBACCO INTERNATIONAL OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018
flue-cured was still being harvested on October 4. An auctioneer described how even where tobacco survived the hurricane, the production calendar was jumbled badly buy the rain. “On late-planted tobacco, we saw some harvested just once, then all the rest was stripped,” said Dennis White, owner of the Old Belt Tobacco Sales, which operates a warehouse near Winston-Salem. That harvesting schedule did not contribute to best quality. But at his auction, he still got good sales, and all leaf offered found a home. But the character of the leaf offered definitely changed, with much more than usual graded as Smoking Leaf or H leaf. “H5K is a grade we see a lot,” White said. The price did not go up substantially after the hurricanes, he said. “It falls in the $1.50 to $1.65 range,” he said in
