The North Carolina State Fair will feature a mock tobacco auction on Friday, October 24 at 2 p.m. in the Tobacco Pavilion located in Heritage Circle. The event will include retired auctioneers and tobacco company buyers who will re-create a traditional tobacco auction. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler is expected to attend.
The mock auction is designed to demonstrate the process that once marked the end of a season’s work for tobacco farmers. In previous years, farmers would bring their bundled tobacco to market where it was displayed in rows on burlap sheets and sold to the highest bidder. Auctioneers would call out prices rapidly while buyers and warehouse workers moved along each row making bids.
Currently, most tobacco is sold through contracts rather than at auctions. Despite this change, 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 background information provided by event organizers.
