About two weeks ago, the Kentucky tradition of the burley sales season was once again taking place in a Danville warehouse. Although the sounds of the season are the same, the scene has changed over the years since the days of flourishing tobacco harvesting.
A fork lift moves a few more bales of tobacco onto the floor at Farmer’s warehouse.
Jerry Rankin has run the burley auction sales at Farmers Tobacco Warehouse for years. He fears this might be the last go round in this warehouse because of the cost of rent compared to the burley income. Rankin, who has raised well over 50 crops of tobacco, said that wasn’t always the case. “At one time this was a 22 million pound market and never since 1950 did we drop below one-two-three in the top averages. It was one of the top markets in the whole entire eight state burley belt,” said Rankin.
While Rankin is not sure cigarette consumption rates have fallen as much as reported, he is convinced that an already diminishing tobacco farming business in states like Kentucky is being hurt by companies buying leaf from other countries. “We need a tariff on tobacco coming in from other countries. The man in Washington needs to do that for us. There’s a lot of people especially in eastern Kentucky that had small crops. It was their livelihood and now they don’t have that,” said Rankin.
Travel down any road in central Kentucky and Rankin noted farms are up for sale. He said tobacco is what held farmers together, but that no longer the case.
Earl Robinson of Danville joined about two dozen growers on the warehouse floor that day. Robinson says it was a tough growing season with dry conditions and a light crop. He says it’s understandable that it’s difficult to compete with foreign grown tobacco. “People don’t understand that in a foreign country, you may just get one meal a day and you got to sell you product for whatever you can get for it. That’s why it’s so cheap. People don’t understand why it’s so much cheaper in a foreign country, they have no choice. We take everything for granted here,” said Robinson.
Phillip Morris tobacco company spokesman Steve Callahan says the vast majority of purchases are from U.S. growers, but the cigarette maker does buy some leaf internationally as well.
Macy Lainhart of Berea is a grower who has also seen tobacco crops come and go for more than four decades. On this day, she was waiting anxiously for the sale to start. When asked about her crop Lainhart said she is concerned about how much she will receive.
“...I’m hoping it will bring good….bring how much good?....I don’t know…good enough (so) we can get by this year,” Lainhart said.
Lainhart, who works at Eastern Kentucky University in dining, says she only grew one acre of tobacco this year.
Not all tobacco farmers are only interested in selling. Leroy Louderback came to central Kentucky from Georgetown Ohio. There too much water was the problem. Louderback said he didn’t put out one plant. “You can’t get tobacco to grow below sea level,” said Louderback.
“Sometimes I can buy tobacco and just turn around and sell it or re-work it, straighten it up. Just like there’s some tobacco here where the bales don’t weigh enough. If I can get it bought at fair market price, we’ll take them home bale them up to where they have the right weight in them and sell em that way,” said Louderback.
Auctioning of tobacco in warehouses across Kentucky was prevalent decades ago, but for close to 20 years now there’s been another option; contracting directly with tobacco companies.
As the Danville receiving station began accepting tobacco deliveries earlier this month, longtime Madison County tobacco farmer Eddie Warren brought bales to the station. And for the first time, he said he and other growers had to take their tobacco back home.
“Yeah, that was the first time that had happened. We’ve had tobacco before we’ve had unfavorable curing conditions that the color was not good. Matter of fact, I’ve seen it lots worse than what we had this year. But, yeah that’s the first time that basically tell you we can’t use it,” said Warren.
Steve Callahan of Phillip Morris said the manufacturer values the long term relationship with growers and is committed to working with them. “The situation we found ourselves in this year is due to the undesirable weather conditions, we have rejected more burley tobacco than we have historically. Basically we found that it’s lower quality and unusable tobacco,” said Callahan.
Callahan noted Phillip Morris knows it presents a challenge to the growers and it’s working to try to figure out what to do to address the situation.
Warren, meanwhile, said the company did accept some tobacco the following week. While he once focused most all of his farming efforts in the tobacco field, Warren noted these days it’s one of three sources of income.
“It all works good together with me still growing a little bit of tobacco and the wife taking care of the flowers and of course, we’ve got the cattle. It all meshes together pretty good. Tobacco still a significant part of the income,” said Warren.
Warren said a greenhouse that used to grow tobacco seedlings now is home to a variety of flowers.
Although some Kentucky farmers are turning more of their attention to hemp these days, neither Warren or Rankin from Danville are sold on hemp yet.
In comparing tobacco and hemp, UK Ag Economist Will Snell says tobacco represented a quarter of cash receipts in the 1990’s. Now he says it’s more like 6%. And while hemp production is increasing, Snell says it’s still only makes up about 1% of cash receipts. So tobacco may be down, but it’s certainly not out in Kentucky.?
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