The decline that has occurred in tobacco production in the US state of Kentucky has been blamed partly on the trend for tobacco to be written out of international trade agreements.
Writing on Agweb.com, Ashley Davenport quoted Ryan Quarles, the state’s Agriculture Commissioner, as saying that the cash crop relied heavily on exports.
Speaking at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky last week, Quarles, said that trade deals ‘continue to scrap tobacco from the mix, taking its toll on acres in the Bluegrass State’.
“Historically, tobacco is king in Kentucky,” said Quarles. “At our peak, we had 85,000 different tobacco farms. Now, we have 4,500 people engaged in raising tobacco.”
Quarles added that tobacco was a very labor-intensive crop. Most estimates indicated that it required about 250 hours of manual labor for each acre of tobacco grown in Kentucky.