- 5 - 



Table 1. — Pounds of tobacco (net packed weight) in 6 billion cigars, with 

 varying proportions having natural binders 



Natural binders 



Quantity 





Natural binders 



: Processed binders 



: Total 



Percent 





Million pounds 



Million pounds 



Million pounds 



100 





23-3 



___ 



23.3 



TO 





16.3 



3.9 - h.k 



20.2 - 20.7 



50 





11.6 



6.5 - 7-3 



18.1 - 18.9 



20 





h.l 



10.5 - 11.6 



15.3 - 16.3 



10 : 





2.3 



11.8 - 13.1 



lJ+.l - 15.1+ 



Commodities Sold 1 



>3L 



Growers 







In the past, growers of cigar binder types did not sell packed tobacco for 

 binders. Most sold the tobacco in bundles, at farm sales weight. They sold, 

 in fact, two commodities jointly produced, one being tobacco to be sorted into 

 binder grades for natural binders, and the other being stemming tobacco for 

 scrap chewing and, to a small extent, for short fillers in cigars. They might 

 sell the two commodities as separate lots of tobacco or the two might be separ- 

 ated by the buyer in the marketing channel. Some growers had such a small 

 quantity of stemming tobacco in their crops that it did not pay them to divide 

 it into sorting and stemming tobacco. The buyers threw out any stemming 

 tobacco in the sortable tobacco they bought, as they sorted it into binder 

 grades. Other growers divide their tobacco into two or three groups of grower 

 grades: Binders, or the tobacco to be sorted; stemming; and fillers. The last 

 two are used for scrap chewing or short fillers and are both what is here called 

 stemming tobacco. 



Some crops contained such a small quantity of sorting tobacco that the 

 extra returns for sorting it into binders would not pay for the extra time and 

 effort required to separate into the two or three grower grades. Such tobacco 

 was straight stripped. It was sold almost entirely for stemming and was not 

 sorted by the buyer. Similarly, the stemming and filler lots were not sorted 

 by the buyers. 



The tobacco for sorting brought a much higher price than stemming tobacco. A 

 grower who stripped his tobacco into two or more lots did so with the inten- 

 tion of getting enough more for his sorting tobacco, or binders, to pay for 

 the extra labor, even though he sold the lots of stemming and filler at a lower 

 price. The cuttings are a byproduct from the binders, and are used for scrap 

 chewing and short fillers. Cigar binder 'types of tobacco used in scrap chew- 

 ing or short fillers consist of tobacco sold by the grower as stemming or fill- 

 ers, the throwouts which the buyer separated from his binder grades, and the 

 cuttings from the making of cigars. More than half the tobacco sold by the 



