Rain And Smoke Make For Challenging Year In Connecticut
The Connecticut River Valley is the home of Connecticut broadleaf, shade and Havana wrappers, and persistent rains plus overcast skies from Canadian wildfires have made this season a difficult one for tobacco farmers.
“It’s been a challenging year, but that’s what I signed up for,” says tobacco farmer Jon Foster, of Dunn and Foster, who grows broadleaf and Havana wrapper in the Valley. “It’s shaping up to be another wet year.” When tobacco crops are subject to more rain, the tobacco gets less robust in flavor. “It’s going to be a thinner crop, which isn’t good for maduro wrapper,” he says.
“The weather has definitely affected the crops here in Connecticut,” says Nick Melillo, owner of Foundation Cigars, which is headquartered in Ellington, Connecticut. “A lot of farmers got too much water.”
Tobacco and other farming takes place along the lush, nutrient rich soils of the Connecticut River Valley, which was carved out of the earth by a retreating sheet of ice thousands of years ago. The Connecticut River is New England’s longest, stretching for more than 400 miles, from Pittsburg, New Hampshire, all the way down to the Long Island Sound. It runs through four states including Massachusetts and divides New Hampshire from Vermont.
Much of New England has been subject to heavy rains of late, none heavier than the flooding that hit Vermont in early July. Parts of the state were soaked by more than nine inches of rain from a single storm. Rivers are drains, moving water from land to the sea, and some of that water ended up in the Connecticut River and drained to the Sound. Combine that with the chain of heavy rainstorms that have fallen throughout the Valley itself and you end up with flooded farmland.
WTNH in Connecticut reported that “hundreds of acres of crops” have been ruined by flooding along the river. In a post on the state website for Connecticut, officials wrote: “Heavy rainfall in July 2023 has caused unprecedented flooding along the Connecticut River and other waterways for Connecticut’s agricultural producers.” Much of that agriculture is corn and other produce, but some of it is tobacco.
Some fields have flooded, many others are just wet. “There’s flood plain farmland…the guys right alongside the Connecticut River are having issues with flooding,” says Foster. “Our particular farm is a little farther way from the Connecticut River; we’re dealing with wet conditions but not flooding…We‘re going to lose some in some wet spots…there are some areas that drowned.”
The season began cool and overcast, and later got excessively wet, extremely humid and quite hot. Heat is good for tobacco, and the crops grow quickly as temperatures rise, but too much water is a problem. Tobacco needs moisture, like all crops, but too much is a bane.
Part of farming is dealing with the swings of mother nature. Hail, floods, torrential rains and winds can all do damage. This year, in addition to all the rain, farmers have also had to contend with the occasional gloomy skies caused by the smoke pushed south from Canadian wildfires.
Last year’s broadleaf crop (there is little shade grown in Connecticut these days, and the Havana plantings are smaller than broadleaf) was excellent. “Last year definitely we had a good crop for maduros,” says Foster.
The excessive rain this year will likely lead to a smaller crop. Foster estimated that the 2023 crop might be 20 percent smaller than last year’s crop. “Right now it’s 20 percent,” says Foster, “but it’s raining right now. We’re crossing our fingers.”
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