Small US Burley crop

The 2018 Burley crop looks like being the smallest such crop produced since records were first kept, according to the latest issue of Christopher Bickers’ Tobacco Farm Newsletter.
Bickers quotes the COO of the Burley Stabilization Corporation, Daniel Green, as saying that the crop just coming onto the market had been projected at 90 million pounds.
And while the numbers might end up a little higher than 90 million pounds by the end of the delivery season, Green had said that they would not total more than 100 million pounds, which would be the smallest Burley crop since records have been kept.
Bickers said that part of the shortfall had resulted from substantial cutbacks in plantings in the spring, which had amounted to 20 percent according to the US Department of Agriculture.
But he added that losses caused by late-season rains were the big factor. Some fields had been drowned.