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Tobacco with Little Sucker Control Waiting for Barn Space or Frost?

6K views 11 replies 5 participants last post by  prwttsh 
#1 ·
Normally the only reason that tobacco is still in the field this time of year is because of a lack of barn space. Growers are usually in such a hurry to empty barns and refill them fast enuff that the tin never cools off. This year is different. I am told that a lot of tobacco was planted without the grower having a contract with a buyer. Last year auctions began to make a comeback, so growers gambled on that this year.

This year's auction prices have been disasterous. Tobacco has been bid from $.30 to $1.00 per pound. The growers that have crop insurance on their no-contract tobacco are praying for a killing frost cuz they will be paid $2.15 a pound. The long range forecast shows no frost in sight. Being between a rock and a hard place seems to apply here.




 
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#3 ·
Bert, a retired tobacco farmer was by the farmers' market a few weeks ago and he started his conversation with me by saying "I went to a funeral today". He told me about going to an auction and the low prices. Last year, the auction sales were bringing higher prices than the contracts paid, and the buying companies raised the contract prices so they could get some of the crop. I guess this year they decided to put the auction warehouses out of business.:whip:
 
#5 ·
Gordon, It is just a half mile from Becky's house and that farm had not been planted in tobacco for many years, and it looked good all summer since its planting. The suckers started coming out a month ago, and I know they have sapped alot of wieght out of it. The farmer began priming it today. A neighbor that lives across the road today told me that when the workers walked into the field they "disappeared" because of all the suckers.
 
#8 ·
A shoot or sucker will grow from each leaf axil, where the leaf is attached to the stalk, and will grow out from top to bottom of the plant after the plant first flowers from the stalk. The plants are topped, flowers broken out, hopefully before they get too large. This is done to force the plant energy into making its leaves larger and thicker.

At topping the plant will also quickly begin to grow the suckers to produce more flowers for reproductive reasons. The sucker growth also reduces potential weight of the leaves and harms yield. There can also be as many as 3 crops of suckers per plant depending upon the season.

A mess of suckers also slows harvesting. Bits and parts of them will end up in the cured tobacco, that will be less desirable when sold.

Farmers spent lots of hours manually removing suckers from their crops until the 1960s or so when chemicals began to appear that have pretty much eliminated that hand labor if applied properly. Weather and crop conditions are the most important factors that determine how and when to apply sucker control agents.

In my youth, suckering tobacco was probably one of the most tiring and hottest jobs that we did in it. If the suckers got big and ahead of a farmer, a lot of leaves would be broken off the plants when removing the suckers.

A lot of what had to be done with growing and curing tobacco actually evolved into almost an art because it was so labor intensive years ago. Mechanization has helped tremendously, but a little old timey knowledge is still worth alot today.
 
#11 ·
Bruce, that tobacco was in the field a long time, and the chemical preventative would have slowly disappeared which also may have contributed to the sucker overgrowth. I heard a couple of folks over the winter speculate that the crop had been planted with the intent of doing the least necessary to collect the crop insurance. It was a pretty crop until the last month it was in the field.
 
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