DANVILLE (Virginia) REGISTER & BEE

September 27, 2007

Harvest goes mechanical

By REBECCA BLANTON

Register & Bee staff writer

New smokers in China are part of what’s driving the new look of tobacco in Virginia. In a county that’s been a traditionally flue-cured region, burley is beginning to take over.

Many farmers in the county have doubled or even tripled their burley tobacco crops in the past couple of years, according to Stephen Barts, extension agent for Pittsylvania County.

“Tobacco companies want more of it and right now people are getting a premium for burley,” he said. “So they want to grow it.”

Now the challenge is how to harvest it.

“We’re trying to help farmers find a way to cut down on the amount of labor it takes to harvest burley,” Barts said Wednesday.

“Traditionally, burley is cut with a hatchet, speared on a stick and hung in a barn. We’re just trying to cut down on the number of times human hands touch it to make it more efficient,” he said.

Barts and the Virginia Cooperative Extension office, along with several farm equipment manufacturers, hosted a field day the first week of September to demonstrate some of the current burley tobacco-harvesting machines available. No one in the county is using the machines yet, he said. Barts, however, wants farmers to know what options are out there.

“These machines are used more in Tennessee, Kentucky … where the farms are 50, 100 acres,” he said. “That’s a lot of tobacco to cut by hand.”

Barts said each tobacco plant in a field is touched an average of at least 10 times by human hands before it is baled.

Eliminating the need to pull, cut, spear and hand load each tobacco stick may significantly decrease that average, particularly since the machines are “affordable,” he said.

“They’re in the $20,000, $30,000 range, cheap as far as farm equipment goes,” Barts said. “Flue harvesters, for instance, can run anywhere from $200,000 to half a million dollars.

“The Kirpy which is made in France, goes for about $16,000 in France; but I’d say it’d be $25,000 to get it here. The Powell 6026, made by MarCo Manufacturing, is a little more.”

For farmers with less acreage, like Chris Haskins, it’s not cost effective to buy and use a machine.

“I’m not afraid of hard work and besides, the machines tend to destroy the most expensive part of the plant, down around the bottom of the stalk,” he said Wednesday.

Barts agreed.

“They do damage the plant some,” he said.

What it comes down to, Barts said, is cost and the size of a farmer’s acreage.

For larger farms, or if labor costs begin to meet or exceed $10 an hour as they’re expected to do in 2009, the machines may make more economic sense.

Haskins points to stray tobacco leaves drying on the ground in his tobacco shed on Old Mine Road. He plans to pick them up by hand once they’re dry.

“Pure gold,” Haskins said. “And I’m not going to waste it.”

He has flue-cured tobacco drying in the barns, too, but that’s getting expensive, he said.

There’s the cost of chemicals and propane, both of which cut down his profits.

“All it takes to cure burley is air,” Haskins said, “and last time I checked, that was free.”

He has 8 acres of burley packed into a new tobacco shed he just built. Each plant was cut by hand with a hatchet, then speared by hand onto a tobacco stick and transferred to his new tobacco shed. Very labor intensive, but that’s how he likes it.

Haskins’ father and grandfather grew tobacco and he grew up growing it, but this is his second year with his own crop and he is growing mostly burley to compete with other tobacco markets.

China, which also grows mostly a burley type tobacco, is one of the world’s fastest growing tobacco markets. Asian smokers with a taste for burley are partly behind big tobacco’s push to buy more U.S. grown burley, Barts said.

“I’m not a smoker, but I understand burley has a different taste,” Barts said.

If demand for burley continues to increase and farmers see success in growing and harvesting and are getting higher prices for their burley, there may eventually be a demand for the machines, he said.

“Commercial harvesters are harvesting burley with three people with these machines,” Barts said.

Traditional hand harvesting involves “as many people as you can get,” he laughed.

For now, it’s an option, Barts said. Whether farmers continue to remain loyal to the traditional hatchet, spear and tobacco stick or try a machine is yet to be seen, but the options are there, Barts said.

“Each farmer just has to decide for themselves,” he said.