Tobacco Curing Areas

Around the world, people smoke 15 billion cigarettes every day; in the United States alone, people smoke 1 billion each day! Philip Morris, the largest U.S. cigarette producer, earns over $30 billion a year selling tobacco resulting in $6.5 billion in profits or a 22 percent return on sales.

And who pays for the medical bills associated with direct and indirect smoking? You, guessed it -- not the corporations that caused the problem but the U.S. government with its regressive tax-based health programs.

Describe the three tobacco curing techniques. How do they affect the "look" of tobacco barns?

Answers:

• fire cured: a fire is made on the ground inside a barn; saw dust is used to make smoke which cures the tobacco leaves hanging from the rafts above
• flue cured: heated (e.g., natural gas) air is forced into small, sealed barns to dry the tobacco
• air cured: air naturally circulates through barns via openings in the walls and vents in the roof that are opened during the warm day and closed in the cool and damp evening,

The annual tobacco crop is worth $800 million in Kentucky, nearly half of all US tobacco farms being located here. One acre of tobacco needs 200-300 hours of  sweaty, dirty labor. The typical Kentucky tobacco farm has 100 acres, with fewer than 5 acres devoted to tobacco. Half of Kentucky's tobacco is exported.

For information on tobacco production around the world, see the International Tobacco Growers' Association's web site.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 30 April 1996; last revised on 07 Dec 2010.