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SW “Ohia” | Ron..NEILL..10/48,
Sante Fe Natural Tobacco Co. basically invented organic tobacco products back in the late-1990's.
Now part of R.J. Reynolds, they are paying around $5 per pound for organic leaf versus around $2 for conventional.
Demand for organic tobacco has doubled every year since it debuted.
Burley tobacco is grown pretty close to organic anyway. Still cultivated, lots of hand hoeing, etc. Biggest difference is lack of sucker spray. Growers jug on soybean oil to prevent suckers just liked they did back in the 1950's.
Conventional Burley will raise between 2,000 and 2,500 pounds per acre.
Organic Burley will raise between 1,500 and 2,000 pounder per acre.
I just posted a tobacco market observation over in the Market area. It's not good. The grower pool in Kentucky alone has shrunk from almost 60,000 in 1992 to 4,500 in 2012. The remaning growers are fighting to stay afloat, and organic has become an option to do that. Conventional price has stayed flat for almost 15 years while everything else has gone up.
Many folks in this region don't have any other option. When you own a 150 acre farm with only 20 marginally tillable acres, what can you grow and make any profit? There are fields around here that have been in continuous tobacco for over a hundred years.
I don't use tobacco products and will never encourage it. But when there is a market, somebody will grow it.
Edited by Red Paint 1/22/2017 11:42
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Cigarette smoking "feel good"
