WHO/WHAT:
The N.C. State Fair mock tobacco auction, featuring retired auctioneers and tobacco company buyers recreating a typical tobacco auction. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler will also be on hand.
WHEN/WHERE:
Friday, Oct. 23, 2 p.m. in Tobacco Pavilion in Heritage Circle
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
EDITORS – Please note this is a highly visual event that makes for great video, audio and engaging photos.
This mock auction highlights what would have been the culmination of a season’s worth of work to bring the crop from seed to harvest to sale. Farmers brought their bundled tobacco to the market to be auctioned off, with row after row of burlap sheets full of tobacco lined up to be bid on. Auctioneers, buyers and warehouse workers would walk down each row of tobacco with the auctioneer rapidly calling out numbers and buyers signaling what tobacco they wanted and what they would pay.
Today, the majority of tobacco is sold under contract and does not go to auction. North Carolina is still the top producer of flue-cured tobacco in the United States.
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