THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100305
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: AHOSKIE LENGTH: 72 lines
As the auctioneer led a procession of buyers down a long line of tobacco mounded on sheets of burlap, Shirley Pierce smiled in approval.
Pierce has been a partner for nearly 40 years in Ahoskie's three-warehouse complex called Farmers Tobacco Warehouse, which concluded more than two months of tobacco auctioning on Wednesday.
This year, not a day went by that Pierce didn't see the price climb immediately to $1.92 a pound and stay there.
Despite less than perfect weather this year and ever-increasing labor costs, Pierce called 1996 a record-breaker.
``It is selling like hot cakes, as fast as the ticket markers can mark the tickets,'' he said, as he stood on the well-worn floor of one barn. ``They will take anything they can get. It's amazing. We've sold just about everything on the floor for the last four weeks.''
Top price last year was $1.84 a pound, Pierce said. But last year was a better growing season, and the crop that is North Carolina's major agricultural enterprise was more plentiful.
This year, Pierce said he estimates that Virginia and North Carolina farmers lost about 25 percent of their crop to wind and rain.
``We had a terrible hail storm to hit three counties around here the last week in June,'' he said. ``Then, Bertha and Fran blew through. The wind and water devastated the crop.''
The tobacco was either beaten to the ground, causing farmers to have to hire migrant labor to move into the fields to set the plants upright, or it was drowned. And even though there was evidence in the barn Wednesday of tobacco that had gotten too much water, it still sold.
Water-laden tobacco, after curing, shows up as a dark, chocolate-brown among golden-orange leaves, said Eugene Eason, a buyer for Diamond International of Farmville, N.C.
There were five buyers representing major domestic and foreign tobacco companies at Wednesday's sale. Companies like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard already had tagged their chosen bundles before the final sale started.
Like Eason, who buys for five smaller companies, the others were willing to overlook the dark color in some of the 430,000 pounds that were sold just to get the product they wanted.
``Most of the problem was storm damage,'' Eason said. ``What Bertha didn't get, Fran did. Every other year, we're looking for quality. This year, it's just really in demand.''
Virginia, North and South Carolina, Florida and Georgia are known for flue-cured tobacco, or tobacco that is dried in heated barns rather than hung to dry naturally. Most flue-cured tobacco is used in making cigarettes.
The market declined for a few years. But despite price increases, state and federal laws and anti-smoking warnings, it has started to rise again, said Pierce.
``The anti-smoking campaigns are having a psychological effect on the people growing and working in it,'' he said. ``We're all very aware of the youth issue and the health issue. Sales had been dropping off.
``Then, they seemed to flatten out last year. Now, they're starting to rise again. The market's out there. If it's not in the U.S., it's in Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Germany - England has always been a big buyer.''
Wherever the tobacco sold in Ahoskie might end up, none of it was left in the barn by the time the sale ended.
``This has been an unusual year, a most unusual year,'' said Steve Dennison, a tobacco inspector with the tobacco division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ``Eastern North Carolina and Virginia got a double whammy this year. Still, it's a good, ripe crop. If it hadn't been for the storms, it would have been a bang-up, bumper crop.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II, The Virginian-Pilot
Above: Buyers bid on sheets of tobacco as they move along the floor
at Ahoskie. Buyers' hands indicate bids to company owner and
auctioneer Dan Oden (left in blue shirt). Below a near perfect
tobacco leaf is examined. by CNB