CWNews
Worst Conn Broadleaf Crop in Years
WBUR 90.9 FM, Boston's NPR affiliate is reporting this week that tobacco farmers in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts are claiming this years crop to be the worst they've seen.
Published August 4, 2009
HADLEY, Mass. — Take the MassPike west until it drops into the Connecticut River Valley around Hadley on down to Southwick, and you land at the home of one of Massachusetts’ little-known historic crops.
“A lot of people don’t realize that we produce some of the finest cigar wrappers in the world,” says farmer Allan Zuchowski.
Zuchowski descends from the Polish immigrants who started growing tobacco commercially here during the Civil War, when the North needed a new supply. Turns out the normally sweltering, muggy summers in this hazy valley are ideal for cultivating the broadleaf variety that’s wound around cigars.
“Today is perfect,” Zuchowski says, looking out across his farm. “Hot and humid, exactly what this crop likes. But it was damaged when we had the cool and the cloudy and the wet.”
Zuchowski shows the damage by walking through his field, plucking what should be deep green leaves that are as big as a broadsheet newspaper. But some leaves are stunted and furled inward. Others bear blotches of pale green. And still more are dinged with brown speckles.
All from a variety of plant diseases that thrived in the cool, damp weather when these tobacco plants were young and weak.
“This is an advanced case of the disease, and that is just not a good leaf” Zuchowski says, ripping it from the plant.
***SNIP***
Zuchowski’s crop is ruined. “All my life, this is the worst,” he says. “And I can say probably the same for my neighbors around me.”
Joe Czajkowski farms up the road from Zuchowski. He only knows of one area farmer who’s going to harvest any tobacco this summer. “It was like the perfect storm for tobacco,” Czajkowski says. “It’s a goner. The crop is just not marketable to any company. There’s no quality there.”
Ted Smiarowski of the federal Farm Service Agency says three-quarters of the Massachusetts tobacco crop is a total loss. “The sad part, too, is that a lot of locals work on these farms for jobs,” Smiarowski says, “and they’re not working this year on them. Because there’s nothing to harvest.
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