Latest News From Tobacco

One of the most devastating crop insurance frauds in history allowed willing farmers to collect on fake claims and sell hidden yields. At a minimum, $100 million was stolen at all levels of the agriculture industry.

U.S. Farmers are waiting for the details in the Phase 1 trade agreement with China. While eyes are on grains and livestock, Southern growers hope China wants tobacco too.

Plants are shorting themselves on yield—and have been for years. Photorespiration robs plants of up to 40% of their yield potential and researchers are out to shortcut that process and regain productivity.

Damage assessments to agriculture are starting to emerge from North Carolina and South Carolina. Ag losses could swell into the billions of dollars.

Floods unleashed across North Carolina by deadly Hurricane Florence are destroying crops after the storm wreaked havoc on cotton and tobacco.

The National Hurricane Center reporting Hurricane Florence is intensifying and becoming a Category 4 storm. This comes in the middle of corn harvest for North Carolina farmers as they rush to harvest as much as they can.

Hurricane Matthew was recently determined to be a Category 4 storm, and farmers in the southeast are under pressure to get harvest-ready crops out of the field. 

Finding alternative uses for tobacco plants brought Tyton BioEnergy Systems to the Danville area a little more than four years ago — and now the company has announced it has found a way to extract oils from the plants to create non-fossil jet fuel.

Agriculture officials say that poultry and hog operations appeared to have come through the storm all right. But when the rains came, workers were just getting into the fields to harvest such things as peanuts, sweet potatoes and tobacco.

As tobacco demand continues to fall, beef production has become more important to the Bluegrass State.

Once a staple of the Pee Dee's economy, tobacco's slow and steady decline is something lifelong farmers like the Floyds in Olanta have witnessed firsthand, but still dedicate acreage and time to its production.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled Tuesday that the inclusion of anti-tobacco language in a Pacific Rim trade deal being negotiated could influence his stance on a potential agreement covering nearly 40% of the global economy.

Trevor Bass walked among the rows of tobacco plants — the broad, green leaves up to his chest — and declared a good crop.

Contracting sprung up a decade ago after the demise of a federal program of price supports and production quotas that guaranteed minimum prices for tobacco for most of the 20th century.

In 2012, the Labor Department withdrew a proposed rule that would have banned children under 16 from several kinds of agriculture work, including tobacco farms.

Starting next month, America's remaining tobacco growers will be totally exposed to the laws of supply and demand. The very last buyout checks, totaling about $916.5 million, go out in October to about 425,000 tobacco farmers and landowners.

Joanna Carraway is the 2013 winner of the Tomorrow’s Top Producer Horizon Award.