A mock tobacco auction will take place at the N.C. State Fair on Friday, October 24, at 2 p.m. in the Tobacco Pavilion located in Heritage Circle. The event will feature retired auctioneers and tobacco company buyers who will re-create a traditional tobacco auction process. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler is expected to attend.
According to organizers, this event demonstrates the process that was once common for selling tobacco crops. In the past, farmers would bring their bundled tobacco to market, where it would be laid out on burlap sheets and sold through an auction system involving rapid bidding by auctioneers and signals from buyers.
Currently, most tobacco in North Carolina is sold under contract rather than through public auctions. Despite these changes in sales methods, North Carolina remains the leading producer of flue-cured tobacco in the United States.
“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 an what they would pay,” according to event background information.
