Tobacco farmers fear big planting cut this season

 

(Southeast Farm Press) The mood was somber when the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina held its annual meeting in Raleigh, N.C., on Feb. 6 in conjunction with the Southern Farm Show.
Nearly every grower in attendance, it seemed, had received news that the pounds he could contract to produce had been reduced from 2014, said the association’s president Tim Yarbrough of Prospect Hill, N.C.
“Every conversation among growers is about a bleak forecast in terms of real leaf demand,” he said. “It isn’t easy to understand how we seemingly find ourselves in this oversupply situation all of a sudden.”
But some of the factors involved are not hard to identify, he said: Continued