As Claims Add Up, Tobacco Is Connecticut's Big Crop

(Hartford Courant) Tropical Storm Irene swamped pumpkin patches, mangled apple trees and flattened corn fields, and combined with other extreme weather events in 2011 it might be a good guess that last year was the worst ever for insured crop damage. Across the nation, it was indeed a record.
But as the numbers nearly tallied, the wreckage last year wasn't nearly as expensive to Connecticut's crops as the blue-mold scourge of 2009 that ravaged tobacco. Farmers in the state received $4.3 million in claims last year, a number that will rise, but nowhere near the total of $14 million two years earlier.
That's not to say Irene wasn't devastating to Connecticut agriculture. It was. It's just that Connecticut broadleaf and shade tobacco is far and away more expensive than any other crop, and the world famous cigar-wrapper leaves were mostly harvested by the time Irene blasted over the state in late August 2011. Continued

Photo: New England hurricane. Tobacco barn in Connecticut, August, 1938 (Library of Congress).