Worst Crop in Years

[Briandg]

To begin with, if the broadleaf is unusable as wrapper, it will be used as a binder for other cigars, like excalibur, that use a broadleaf binder. What is not good enough to even use as binder, can still be used as short filler, or even cut for filler. It won't be wasted, if at all possible, but with every down grading, you lose a huge amount of profit. Where as a premium grade wrapper can cost $1 or so per cigar, chopped filler is sold for pennies for a pound, I suspect, at the manufacturing level. A bad year for wrapper tobacco isn't always a complete failure, it depends on how badly the crop did, how much was lost, and how badly it was damaged. They're talking about this one as being a total failure, though, so I'm not going to guess what the end result will be.

Premium Cigar makers have always tried to keep extra stock on hand. a single bad season can be damaging to a line of cigars, if there is not anything available to keep a consistent blend. There really ought to be plenty of processed broadleaf sitting in bales all around the world to keep a year or two production, I would think. Will it cause a problem with the machine made bargains, like Marsh Wheeling? I think so, as I really doubt that they keep tobacco, buying only year by year.

I'm concerned about the more distant future, five or more years out, as these farmers drop out of the business. Will the cigar industry be able to pay the prices that will be necessary to keep the american tobacco farmers going? Supply and demand will play a key role in pricing, and there will be major fluctuations in availability if another bad season happens, and farmers pack it in. To me, there is a really complicated mess in the works, as a hostile government works against tobacco farmers, which I am sure that they are going to.

I know that Mexico, peru, and costa rica have been working on maduro wrapper for years. I wonder if other areas are going to be pushing to develop maduro similar to our own broadleaf