Hanging on

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: August 15, 2008

Flue-cured tobacco still grows throughout Pittsylvania County and cigarette makers still buy that locally grown tobacco.

But this year’s production could be down as much as 15 percent over last year — which itself is less than half of the 1997 peak of 11,200 harvested acres. This year’s preliminary estimate: Just 4,791 harvested acres of flue-cured tobacco in Pittsylvania County.

This growing season has already seen 100-degree temperatures, chilly weather, drenching rains and weeks of dry weather.

“It’s not the best crop we’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst either,” Pittsylvania County Extension Agent Stephen Barts said of the crop that’s now in the field.

Crop quality can vary widely in a community, but tobacco isn’t an ordinary crop. It was the reason Danville was founded, and why the community grew and developed throughout most of its history.

Tobacco will always be a part of the Dan River Region’s past, but the unanswered question is what kind of future the crop will have here.

Tobacco is still grown in Pittsylvania County, but it isn’t sold in auction warehouses in Danville. It’s no longer stored and processed here like it was in the past, and today, a lot of older farmers are wondering if they should continue, Barts said.

The end of the tobacco quota system in 2004, direct contracts between the farmers and the cigarette makers and reduced demand for tobacco have hurt the golden leaf in our community.

It hasn’t helped that fertilizer and LP gas prices have skyrocketed this year. During dry spells, irrigating tobacco plants is expensive.

Barts said that in 1991, the total operational costs of tobacco was about $2,100 per acre; now it’s $4,000 per acre, and that figure doesn’t include the recent spike in the price of fertilizer.

“The hope of price rebounding has kept them in the game,” Barts said of a lot of tobacco farmers.

Tobacco prices used to be a staple of this and other tobacco country newspapers. A glance at those charts revealed the prices cigarette makers were paying for the locally grown tobacco. Since that system has been replaced with contracting, the community doesn’t even know what kinds of prices the growers are getting for their tobacco.

For the time being, passing motorists can still see tobacco growing in local fields. The future, though, is tied to the past: “That depends on the price of the leaf,” Barts said.