‘Strange year’ for region’s tobacco harvest

The 6-foot, 2-inch tobacco farmer examined the new crop that loomed inches above his head.

This year marked the first time Garland Comer, a 23-year-old tobacco producer with Lazy “C” Farms in Vernon Hill, farmed burley tobacco. He planted six acres of burley along with 70 acres of the traditional flue-cured crop.

Comer and others started pulling tobacco the first week of July — the start of the tobacco harvest this year. The harvest season will continue through October until the first frost.

Comer chewed a long piece of fescue grass while he surveyed the burley and flue-cured tobacco growing side by side on Wednesday.

“It’s just a new thing they got going,” he said and shrugged.

Burley, which started coming to Southside Virginia a few years ago, grows mostly in Tennessee, but the young farmer wanted to see if diversifying his crops would help net a better profit.

While Comer experienced a better tobacco crop in both weight and quality this year over last year, other tobacco producers would prefer better yields, or more leaf growth on each plant.

“This year has been a strange year,” Pittsylvania County Extension Agent Stephen Barts said.

Too much rain fell during the planting season — April to mid-May — which either suffocated the tobacco’s roots or washed out the fertilizer, Barts said. Then, the summer months lacked the amount of rain needed for optimal growth.

The quality of the tobacco didn’t suffer, but the pounds per acre should be down this year compared to last year, he said.

Because of the spring rains, some farmers reapplied fertilizer two or three times, Barts said. With the high price of fertilizer, that tacked on thousands of dollars to growing costs.

The extension office estimated farmers would get an average of $1.70 to $1.75 per pound for their flue-cured tobacco this year based on past data. Yet, estimates say flue-cured tobacco could cost farmers between $1.50 and $2 a pound to grow this year, Barts said, reading from the Virginia Tech and the Virginia Cooperative Extension annual production guide.

C.D. Bryant, a tobacco producer who serves on the Tobacco Commission, thinks it too early to say what the average price would be this season. He said he would need between $1.76 and $1.80 per pound to have a profitable crop.

The sporadic rains and “backward” weather so far didn’t help the Blairs grower, but the year isn’t over and he hopes future rain will help his tobacco put on some weight.

“If you don’t make a certain amount of pounds, you won’t have a net profit when you look at the bottom line,” Bryant said. “It’s hard to tell. That’s the gamble with growing any agricultural commodity.”

Clarence Emerson, a tobacco farmer of Dry Fork, planted more than 100 acres but hopes he has enough tobacco growth to just finish out the pulling season. He may run out of crop to harvest before October.

“This is probably the worst crop I ever had,” Emerson said about the quantity, not the quality.

Comer understands tobacco may be an expensive crop to grow, but said the prices still enable farmers to continue on.

“A farmer will never get rich,” Comer of Halifax County said. “You get enough just to get by and do it again. It’s a good life if you can keep doing it.”