Pee Dee farmers remain dedicated to tobacco production

OLANTA, S.C. (AP) — On a warm and breezy early September afternoon, just down the aptly named Tobacco Road, M.D. Floyd and his brothers Larry and Thurmond were busy with a crop that constitutes a small but important part of our state's agribusiness and history.

Tobacco put Mullins on the map as the tobacco headquarters of the state, and in the late 1800s and early 1900s, city-block-size warehouses were devoted to the desire to wrest a larger market share from the other Carolina.

"Tobacco made seven millionaires on one street between 1910 and 1921," said Reggie McDaniel, director of the S.C. Tobacco Museum, referring to a boom in his hometown of Mullins, where he can trace his family's roots to a 1757 land grant from King George II.

Once a staple of the Pee Dee's economy, tobacco's slow and steady decline is something lifelong farmers like the Floyds in Olanta have witnessed firsthand, but still dedicate acreage and time to its production.

Once the greenish-yellow leaves are racked, they have to be stored for a 10-day curing process that sees an initial temperature of 90 degrees in the sealed barn slowly rise to 175 degrees in order to attain the desired color and texture.

Last year about 100 acres of their farmland was used for tobacco, and Floyd hopes his nephews Zack and Detric will ramp up production next year and more or less take over that aspect of the operation.

Tre Coleman, the state's executive director of the agriculture department's cotton and tobacco board, knows M.D. Floyd well and has high praise for the Floyds.

First harvest was a week after Independence Day, Floyd guesses, with second harvest the last week in July.

There are already several 800 - pound bales that were weighed and bound in a packing machine and now sitting in a barn not far from a flatbed truck that takes the tobacco to Mullins.