Source: Tobacco Grower newsletter, 9/14/12
Tobacco Talk is a periodic electronic newsletter of updates and short reports designed to augment the printed quarterly Tobacco Growernewsletter. If you have information you would like to include in the “Tobacco Talk” report please send it to Graham Boyd at the following email: grahamboyd@nc.rr.com.
MARKETS:
Price Adjustments: During the first week of September nearly every major contract company implemented price changes. The prevailing average value for a quality B1 grade of tobacco now ranges between $2.15 and $2.20.
Sales:The pace of deliveries to the market place had been slower than usual for the first month of tobacco receiving. Much of that was attributed to the late season excessive rains that charged the plants with new nutrient uptake and re-greened the crop causing a slight lag in harvesting.
Other factors involved, included the widespread wind events and accompanying high volume of hail storms that damaged or even removed some of the scheduled harvest for many growers in the east.
In many portions of the old belt the crop was delayed waiting on adequate rainfall.
Grower Accounts:The majority of growers report being very satisfied with how the crop is grading and selling. In general the crop is regarded by growers as a good quality crop for marketing. However, nearly every grower reports their crop is now anticipated to checkup light in total pounds per acre.
CROP FORECAST:
USDA:The recent USDA crop report surveys growers in August and compiles data to issue a crop forecast on September 1st. USDA has the crop projection at 490.2 million pounds flue cured.
TGANC Estimate:Our organization calculates the crop using different approach. There are 50 directors on the TGANC board encompassing and efficient overlay of all the tobacco growing acres across the state. Additional conference with CountyExtensionagents suggest this crop will be considerably less than the volume USDA is projecting.
I visited four different receiving stations inWilsonon Thursday, September 13thand surveyed numerous growers (20+) on the question of crop size. I also spoke with management at the station regarding their perspective of crop volume based on deliveries and comments shared by growers.
The consensus is that the crop yield is expected to approximately 2200 – 2300 pounds. Locations east ofWilsonCountycertainly will be less than that target. Excessive rainfall has washed out the crop in terms of weight per acre. However, the quality is excellent! Much of the crop is very ripe and has oil. It simply takes more acres to fill a barn.
Another factor reducing the weight was storm damage. Especially the straight line wind event that struck on a Sunday in early July. If that single event blow off an average of 2-3 leaves per stalk then that accounted for 10-15% of the potential harvest in a matter of minutes on a high volume of acres in 15 counties east of Edgecombe.
In addition there was a significant amount of “blown over” tobacco that required re-standing. In late August we began to realize the impact of storm damaged stalks as the plant integrity has been compromised and the plant becomes increasingly more vulnerable to disease pressure.
The challenge today is becoming how to save the crop. In many locations in the east the crop is completely out of the field. By comparison growers in the old belt report having not harvested all of the first pulling yet and are becoming nervous about early frost.
If NC planted 162,000 acres and it averages 2,200 pounds we will only market 356,400,000 of flue-cured. If USDA figures prove correct in the neighboring states of VA=48 million, SC = 27 million and GA = 25 million then the crop total will be 465,400,000 pounds.
One positive for US growers is the high quality of this crop.
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