How to Cure Tobacco

Tobacco is from the Nicotiania genus and is native to the American continent. The dried leaves were smoked by Native Americans before the arrival of the Europeans. Tobacco quickly became popular with Europeans and was one of the crops that drove the colonization of North America. Tobacco may be smoked, chewed, dipped or snuffed, but all of these methods require the leaves to be cured.

Tobacco is a cash crop that has been produced in Kenya for the last 40 years. Since its inception by the British-American Tobacco (BAT) multinational, its culture, use, health and economic implications have become issues of social and academic inquiry. Growing concerns have been expressed not only about the health hazards involved in tobacco production, but also about the environmental unsustainability of the crop in terms of excessive use of wood.

Today, the crop poses a particularly difficult dilemma for development since its production has generated a wide range of employment, income, foreign exchange and other cash-contributing effects, while the damage to forest resources and to the environment in general seems to outweigh the benefits.

Tobacco has been an essential part of the state's economic and social history for three centuries. The leaf supported thousands of families for many generations and helped create cities, support universities, and build hospitals across the state. The traditional tobacco barn has long been symbolic of the crop's significance in Tar Heel life.

The first stages in curing your tobacco leaves are the drying and colour curing of your tobacco to remove moisture and turn the leaf brown. Your tobacco leaves are about 90% moisture, so while each plant can give you 1 kilo (2 pounds) of tobacco leaves, the dried weight is only about 100 grams. Whilst drying, Virginia tobacco leaves will turn yellow and then brown. Green stemmed tobacco plants such as Havanna take longer to colour change and tend to go straight from green to brown.

Cut the tobacco plant's stalk at its base as an alternate harvesting method. Use the stalk-cutting method for burley and fire-cured types of tobacco. You may split open the stalk to speed drying. This makes it easier to place the plants on wooden laths for curing.

Commercial tobacco companies put their tobacco leaves in large open-ended barns to allow the warm breeze to blow through and draw off the moisture. For the home grower, you can hang your tobacco leaves on canes or galvanised wire in a car port or other sheltered outdoor area. I normally hang my tobacco under overhead grapevines which shelter the tobacco leaves from the rain.

After the plants have reached a certain height, they are transplanted into fields. This was originally done by making a relatively large hole in the tilled earth with a tobacco peg, then placing the small plant in the hole. Various mechanical tobacco planters were invented throughout the late 19th and early 20th century to automate this process, making a hole, fertilizing it, and guiding a plant into the hole with one motion.