ANALYSIS OF TOBACCO GROWERS 7 ASSOCIATION 6 



THE TOBACCO OF THE TRI-STATE AREA 

 PRODUCTION BY QUANTITY AND TYPE 



The three States, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, 

 include some of the most important tobacco-growing districts in the 

 world both as to quality and quantity of tobacco. These States, 

 comprising the so-called tri-State area, during the 4-year period, 

 1922-1925, produced 39.5 per cent of the total United States produc- 

 tion of tobacco. North Carolina alone produced 24.4 per cent of 

 the United States output and 61.6 per cent of the production of the 

 tri-State area. (Fig. 1.) 



Practically no class of tobacco # is grown in the Carolinas except 

 the flue cured, but in Virginia there are three classes — flue-cured, fire 

 cured, and two types of the air-cured class — Burley and Virginia 

 sun-cured. Of these the flue-cured is the most important, compris- 

 ing 63 per cent of the total State tobacco production; dark fired is 

 second in importance, amounting to 31 per cent. The sun-cured and 



Figure I. —Tobacco Production by Types, United States and Tri-State 

 Area, Average 1922-1925 



The tri-State area during the operation of the association produced 39.5 per cent of the 

 total United States production of tobacco. It produced over 95 per cent of the total 

 United States production of flue-cured tobacco as well as comparatively small quantities 

 of dark-fired, sun-cured, and Burley tobaccos. 



Burley types together make up the remainder of less than 6 per cent. 

 From 1922 through 1925, 90 per cent of the production of the three 

 States was flue-cured tobacco. This was over 95 per cent of the 

 United States production of that class. 



The distribution of tobacco production by quantity and types in 

 Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, in 1924, is shown in 

 Figure 2. The production is largely concentrated in the central and 

 south-central part of Virginia, in the north-central and eastern part 

 of North Carolina, and in the northeastern part of South Carolina. 



There has been a continual increase in the total acreage and pro- 

 duction of tobacco in the United States. (Fig. 3.) From a yearly 

 average production of 546,000,000 pounds for the period 1890 to 

 1899, the production increased to an average of 1,322.000,000 pounds 

 for the period 1920 to 1928. This was an increase of 142 per cent 

 in less than 30 years. 



Figure 4 shows the production of the more important types of 

 tobacco from 1909 to 1929. 2 With the exceptions of the flue-cured 



2 Data on production by types prior to 1909 is not available. 



