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You leave the stubble and straw if you're no-tilling beans after wheat, as the wheat reside will aid in controlling weeds and conserving moisture. But, if you follow wheat with a crop like tobacco, you want the wheat residue removed in order to make a good seedbed, and also the straw tends to rob the young tobacco plants of moisture if it comes into contact with their root system.

Boy, thats one I have no idea about at all.

Is tobacco a common crop around you James?

Yes, tobacco is our number one cash crop. My county ranks in the top 3 statewide every year for the production of corn, wheat, and soybeans. But it is that evil weed tobacco that is the biggest moneymaker for those who grow it. Three kinds are grown here......burley, dark fired, and dark air cured. Burley is used in the production of cigarettes, dark fired and dark air cured are used to make snuff and chewing tobacco, with some of the better quality used for cigars.

I grew tobacco for almost 30 years, and can tell you that it's hard work as most of the work is done by hand. Up until about 20 years ago, the growing of tobacco was regulated by USDA, as they told you how much you could grow. Each farm had it's own base, and you could either grow it there, or rent it out. The tobacco was sold mostly at auction houses. Then USDA phased out their control, and now just about all of it is grown on contract to a handful of companies, with U.S Tobacco being the largest here.

The tobacco plants are started off in a greenhouse from a seed that's no bigger than the head of a pin. That's much better than when I first started raising it, because then the plants were sowed outside in what we called plantbeds, and they were very labor intensive, requiring quite a bit of labor. When the plants are about 6 inches in height and with a stem bout the size of a pencil, they are transplanted to the field. You've never farmed until you've spent hours in the sun, setting, hoeing, topping, suckering, cutting, and housing tobacco. But, if you had a good crop, and it sold well, the sweat was worth it.

Very good.

Thanks for the information. I always wondered who got to grow tobacco.


About the most labor intensive crop that was grown up here was sugar beets, years ago. The sugar plant moved and the crop became more mechanized.

Tobacco sounds like hard work!

Tobacco is hard work, that's why most all the farmers here have Mexicans doing the work. When the young plants are transplanted in the field, that is done with a tractor pulling a tobacco transplanter, usually a 2 or 4 row, with workers placing the plants into the rows. After that, most of the work is done by hand, including the harvesting. The harvested crop is then placed in curing barns, and when the plants are dried, it is taken down and a process called "striping" takes place. That means the leaves are removed from the stalk and bundled up for taking to market. Most buyers want a bundle that will weigh around 600 pounds or so.

There are easier methods of doing it these days, than what I did when I was growing it. But, it's still hard work. In the tobacco growing regions of the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia, flue-cured tobacco is grown. They use a lot more mechanization in their methods than we do in the types that are grown here.

An old family friend told me, his uncle raise his own tobacco in the garden.

When people greeted him and said, "Hi," did they really mean "High"?

Quite a few people do now. No worries about what you're smoking or chewing if you grow it.

Ed

I worked for a tobacco farmer one time just to be able to say I had done it. Cutting and racking "baccy" in the drying barns could make you hurt in places you didn't know you had. And I quit chewing while working there because you'd absorb enough sap through your hands to get more nicotine than you'd ever get from a pinch of Copenhagen.

"Tobacco is hard work, that's why most all the farmers here have Mexicans doing the work."

They have Mexicans doing the work because they can pay them less.

No, the Mexican H2A workers actually cost more than local labor would. The farmers have to furnish them housing, transportation, and guarantee them so many hours, plus you pay a certain amount of their travel expenses to and from Mexico. The plus of having the Mexicans, is that you know they're going to show up for work. The unreliability of local labor is what led to the H2A worker program

Did the original Indians use Mexicans? Seems counter to what we think we know, about learning from the Indians and hard work. miles

I didn't consider any of those extra factors. I was extrapolating from my 15 year career on the East Coast in landscaping. Guys were hiring the beans for half price.

If you could get some of the illegal Mexicans, I'm sure you could get some fairly cheap labor. But, the farmers have to go through the government run H2A program, and follow the guidelines that are set. They'd be better off of they could get local help, even if they had to pay them a few bucks more. I think they are paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 an hour, and that's above minimum wage.

Your tobacco workers are probably like apple pickers around here.
They show up when the work needs done, and everyday till its done.
They do manual labor, all day, all year. Not afraid of it, and conditioned to it.
When the work is done, it is understood that they move on.


You can hire local help that can meet some of those conditions, not all.


The big problem is getting the people that will work hard, to show up everyday.
If you do, then they aren't happy when the job is done, and you are done with them.



It amazes me the people around here who will break their backs doing any nasty job you give them.
Untill they get whatever amount of money they need, right now.
Then, you will not be able to find them, untill they need money again.

Dillonbuck,

Years ago I picked apples for a day down around York. One day..................never again. I learned a few things that day. Picking apples by oneself was a lot slower than folks working in teams. Moving that heavy ass orchard ladder around, picking the top and the bottom of old school trees was hard work. What I earned in piece work that day worked out to minimum wage at best. Families in the area made decent money (probably 2x min wage) by having more than one person on a tree, the top person didn't have to move up and down the ladder for every picking basket.

I don't harbor a grudge against anyone, Mexicans included, willing to do hard labor, having done it more than once in my lifetime.

From the sounds of it I don't want to work tobacco and I'm glad I never had to either!

We have ads in our local rural papers for farm workers, for about $10.50 to $11.75 an hour, doing way more work than I'd ever want to do for those wages. Hard to make a living on that, perhaps the H2A folks can do it if housing is provided.

Thanks to you farm folks for keeping this rural forum going. I appreciate your stories.

Geno