Dollars per hectare for tabacco

[Ben Brand]

Was at a tobacco meeting this morning and found this out.
In SA to produce a hectare of tobacco it will cost the farmer R120000 - $11040. I don't know in what measurements you work in the USA, I worked it out in acre. $606/ acre. This cost is everything included( Diesel, fert, labour, electric ect)
Has anybody got the figures where you plant?

 

[istanbulin]

That cost in SA sounds really very high to me. Is that for flue-cured ? I guess, air cured types cost less.

In İzmir area a single hectare tobacco field cost (everything included) is ~$4500 (~$1800/ac) but it (1 ha) only produces 800-1000 kg (~700-880 lb/ac) of cured leaf. If it's compared to other types (e.g. Burley), cost of an Oriental type looks 1.5 times less but its yield is also 3 times less. So this make it at least twice as expensive as others.

One hectar is ~2.5 acres so your cost is ~$1515/ha.

 

[Planter]

1 ha only produces 800-1000 kg (~700-880 lb/ac) of cured leaf.

Considering the dense planting you told us about that´s just appr. 5 grams per plant?!

The Prilep 66-9/7 official variety description mentions 2000-3600kg/ha (around 20g/plant, but it is regarded as very productive).

 

[Planter]

Has anybody got the figures

Interesting numbers for Greece here: http://www.iamb.it/share/img_new_medit_articoli/224_14manos.pdf

 

[istanbulin]

Considering the dense planting you told us about that´s just appr. 5 grams per plant?!

The Prilep 66-9/7 official variety description mentions 2000-3600kg/ha (around 20g/plant, but it is regarded as very productive).

The numbers above in my first post are really very rounded.

Because of the irregularities in an Oriental tobacco field it's hard to calculate accurately for me.

I'm not able to remember the reports of Prilep but that yield really sounds exaggerated to me. It looks more like a yield of Burley.

 

[istanbulin]

Interesting numbers for Greece here: http://www.iamb.it/share/img_new_medit_articoli/224_14manos.pdf

I don't see they mentioned about the type of the tobacco in the paper. Greece (and also Turkey) produces FC, Burley and Semi-Orientals too.

May be their (Greece, Macedonia etc.) yield/ha of Oriental tobacco is higher. But as I saw from the paper, their price is 1.3 EUR/kg in Greece. The price of an average quality Turkish Oriental is 4 EUR/kg (farmer's price).

 

[istanbulin]

I found the Prilep article. It says ;

The Dry tobacco yield averages 2000 - 3600 kg/ha, depending on conditions of growing and applied cultural practices. Pelivanoska (7) reported that dry tobacco yield of Prilep 66-9/7 varied from 1794 kg/ha in the check variant (unfertilized, unirrigated) to 3988 kg/ha in variant fertilized and irrigated with N[SUB]40[/SUB] P[SUB]80[/SUB] K[SUB]100[/SUB] + 55% FWC (field water capacity).

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13102818.2010.10817821

I think they tried hard to show the variety too much productive. 1800 may be reasonable. That amount of fertilizer may give you 3600+kg/ha dry leaf but I don't want to smoke it.

The impact factor of the journal "Biotechnology & Biotechnological Equipment" is only 0.62. So I don't prefer to to take it very seriously. But it was good to look at the images in the article, I enjoyed it.

 

[Michibacy]

I created a chart I used for pricing out the tobacco I sell, it's in excel form, I might send it to Larry and see what he comes up with for a cost per acre if he is willing.

it has inputs such as variety, output, life cycle (seed to planting, planting to harvest, curing), input costs (such as electricity, man hours, fuel etc).

It's amazing to see how much time and money goes into large operations, even after seeing how much time and energy a few hundred plants takes.

 

[istanbulin]

It's nice. There're charts on net but a real chart would be better, especially when based on varieties.

 

[Michibacy]

The only thing about the varietal change is you need to put the stats in for the variety. I use to so I can base my pricing off of actual growth specs not just "average" specs.

 

[ArizonaDave]

This is an interesting thread. Right now, I have $-5 invested in soil, that's it. Mad Oshea was kind enough to donate some seed, actually enough for a jungle! The only disappointment is that the mail system crushed the Little Dutch, and the Connecticut Shade. I may have 2 little Dutch sprouted, but won't know until it gets bigger. One of them may have been a carry over from the plastic domes I put over them until they sprouted.

The Black Mammoth is doing well, I have one plant out this morning trying to get it acclimated to the heat. It has a 1 gallon dome on top, a leftover from the Costco pretzels my daughter and wife ate, so that's free too.
Took the others last night and planted a bunch into their own container.

I'm going to keep my cost down as much as I can, maybe later I'll post the actual cost of X plants I have. Next year, I'd like to add some other varieties, and so on. It's only my first year at this, but I've had vegatable gardens in the past.

 

[Michibacy]

Dave, don't forget to count time as well. Time is money, I have known a few people who ran business manufacturing items and didn't count time in and never met the mark on time vs. money.

 

[Ben Brand]

The figures was for flu cured tobacco. We sit with very high labour costs at the moment. With the poor soils we go as high as 150N 70P 300K in areas. Average 3600kg/ ha. The bulk of the cost, labour and electricity. Feel sorry for the commercial tobacco farmer. Many are getting out of the tobacco growing and start doing game farming. Game farming obviously booming at the moment, prices are sky high, sable antelope up to R3 million a stud bull.

 

[forumdotabaco]

I may have some docs that may help this discussion http://www.forumdotabaco.com/viewforum.php?f=167

 

[Mad Oshea]

I never looked at the leaf weight per plant. But the time, water and curing went Gold weight. But the sales not counting My leaf for Myself, make it up in the end here. Don has great prices as well as quality leaf.

 

[istanbulin]

I may have some docs that may help this discussion http://www.forumdotabaco.com/viewforum.php?f=167

Your forum has good amount of papers, nice.

 

[Planter]

I never looked at the leaf weight per plant.

Since I´m not growing tobacco for money, I find that a more interesting number than kg/ha, as it allows an estimate of "pipe bowls per plant" or "cigars per plant". For example, my Bursa leaves are not very big, but thick, and (derived from early tests) a singe leaf seems to be sufficient for a decently sized bowl. So far most plants already carry more than 20 leaves. I will calculate with 20 leaves in the future (and regard any additional leaf as a welcome variation), and know now how much to plant.

 

[Planter]

More numbers in regard to the original question:

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF ORIENTAL TOBACCO IN TURKEY: http://www.agrojournal.org/14/05-05-08.pdf

("Average cost of tobacco production was calculated to be 4.71 $/kg. Net return obtained from tobacco growing 0.49 $/kg")

Page 52 (costs and margins): http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/markets/tobacco/reports/rep_en.pdf

The problems of Oriental tobacco production in the EC: http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/the-pr...0072ENC_PDF&CatalogueNumber=CB-NA-80-072-EN-C

 

[istanbulin]

Last report's date is 1979.

Others dated 2003.

Since 2003, the gas price is tripled in this country.