NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & SportsBlue Mold Could Put Tobacco Farmers in the Red

Blue Mold Could Put Tobacco Farmers in the Red

RUSSELLVILLE, Ky.- A wet growing season isn't a good thing for every farmer. Last summer, the drought threatened to put farmers out of business. This time, a wet summer brings a new risk to a whole new batch of growers in Kentucky.

"Blue mold" is back with a vengeance in Russellville, Ky. Money may not grow on tree but on a rural Kentucky farm tobacco is the crash crop. Four weeks from harvest time, farmer Ricky Appling sees signs of an enemy that's gotten to his plants before he could.

"Blue mold" is a fungus-like organism that can devour acres of tobacco, especially Burley tobacco used to make cigarettes. Appling points to a rain-soaked summer as the cause. The cure is plenty of sunshine, or a good soaking of the chemical "quadric."

Appling estimates roughly half of his Burley crop has been touched by blue mold and trained tobacco buyers won't touch an infected plant come fall. It's not just the Appling family affected. Many growers in Kentucky have been hit, the state that leads the nation in Burley tobacco production.

One expert also cited a "small scale" blue mold outbreak in East Tennessee.  This blue mold outbreak is cause for worry among all tobacco farmers, even outstanding in their field.

Blue mold is nothing new it just happens very sporadically. Ricky Appling says the last big bout on his farm was the year Hurricane Katrina hit which would've been 2005.  An outbreak back in 1996 cost Kentucky tobacco farmers $200-million.

Saturday, an agriculture extension agent in Kentucky is warning tobacco farmers everywhere to keep an eye out for signs of blue mold.

Tobacco farmers who take a hit in the wallet, because of blue mold can apply for federal aid.