It is harvest time for the golden leaf once again.
When the last three Fuquay-Varina tobacco auction warehouses (once there were 10) closed at the end of the 2003 season, many local folks thought tobacco farming was gone from this central North Carolina area where it had been a primary source of income for many families for close to 100 years.
Not so. Methods of growing, harvesting and selling flue-cured tobacco—especially the selling part—have changed significantly, but tobacco farming is still alive in the community and still considered a good money crop.
Kent Revels, 55, who grew up on a tobacco farm in the Baptist Grove community in Harnett County, just south of Fuquay-Varina, is still doing what his father did, raising tobacco, more acres today than ever before. His 31-year-old son, Joseph, farms with him.
Revels is one of a number of area farmers who has adapted to changing times. Instead of taking his cured leaf to an auction house, hoping tobacco company buyers will like what they see and pay a good price, he contracts now to provide a given number of pounds of the leaf to a company for a set price he negotiates with the company.
The government (the U.S. Department of Agriculture), which had set tobacco quotas and support prices annually for years in an effort to balance supply and demand, got out of the tobacco business in 2004. The action came to be known as the “Buy Out” because farmers were paid for the leaf quotas they had amassed over the years.
Revels has not been unhappy with the contract arrangements. He says of the companies, “They will take the crop if it meets their guidelines. The company I use has incentives for delivery, loyalty and gas,” he adds. He explained that adjustments are made if prices for propane gas and/or fertilizer rise beyond certain limits within the production year. “They pay you for being faithful,” he said in a recent interview. He has a contract now with Phillip Morris USA. It’s the third company Revels has worked with since the government controls over tobacco production ended.
“They are not all the same,” he said. “Some are easier to talk to than others. He said the change to direct contracting has caused growers to realize just how big the tobacco companies are. Representatives farmers talk to are far removed from the executives at the top who make the big decisions, Revels said.
Immediately after the Buy Out occurred, tobacco production in Wake and Harnett Counties and across the state dropped, according to those agencies that keep records on crops. USDA statistics show that in 2003 in Wake County 5,915 acres of land was planted in tobacco. In Harnett County acreage the same year totaled 5,065. By 2006 acreage had dropped to 2,760 in Wake and 2,445 in Harnett. By 2008 , acreage in tobacco in Harnett County was up to 7,310 while in more urbanized Wake the increase was much smaller at 2,770 acres.
Revels said he knows several growers who got out of tobacco farming as soon as the Buy Out took place, but have since gone back to growing the golden leaf. He and others say it is mostly the larger farmers who have hung on, adding significantly to the acreage they grow now that quotas no longer exist.
Revels has 190 acres in tobacco this year, up from about 125 before the Buy Out. He has farmland in both Harnett and Wake Counties. This year he is also growing 200 acres of peanuts, 800 of soybeans and 250 acres of wheat. He sells peanuts under contract as he does tobacco. Payment is based on quality.
As for tobacco, Revels said, given the opportunity he would not go back to selling tobacco at auction. He suggests the companies might like it, since they could again send buyers to sales to pick out the type and quality of leaf they want and leave the rest.
But he’s pleased with the current arrangement.
He said of dealing with the companies, “Most of the time, if you hold up your end of the bargain, everybody is satisfied. It has worked out.”
Revels has bought some new equipment since he has added more tobacco acreage. He is now using mechanical harvesters, and he has purchased a baler to package the cured tobacco in bales for delivery to the company he’s working with. He said he loses a little in quality by using harvesting machines. Human primers can select only the ripened leaves to pull as they go through the fields. Machines pick every leaf within a set range.
But machines mean the work force is considerably smaller.
Revels has also purchased several old school buses, removed the seats and cut off the top halves of the bodies. The buses are used for hauling loose tobacco leaves from field to barn. A conveyor belt in the body of a bus moves tobacco leaves to the back and drops them into a waiting box. Workers guide them into place and use metal pins to secure them. A scale beneath the box weighs each to ensure that all weigh essential the same and thus will cure evenly in the waiting bulk barns. These days Revels transports his cured crop in a tractor trailer to a Phillip Morris collection center in Wilson
There each bale is marked with the grower’s name and then examined by a buyer/grader. In addition to looking at the quality of the tobacco, the examiners also check for foreign objects such as pieces of plastic or metal or a rock which might have been included, accidentally, in a bale. “They allow some tolerance,” Revels said, but after several infractions a grower may be penalized.
Revels isn’t bothered by the requirements. “It’s made farmers more conscientious,” he said. “They’ve had to tighten their belts a bit.”
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