Agricultural Outlook Forum 2002
Washington, DC
February 21-22, 2002
Peter W. Burr
Foreign Agricultural Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Introduction
Chart 1
• Thank you. Good afternoon.
• My presentation this afternoon is entitled the World Outlook for Leaf Tobacco.
• What I’d like to do is look at some of the trends were seeing on the supply side with respect
to the world’s top producers and exporters of leaf tobacco, and then look briefly at world
tobacco demand and some of the trends we’re seeing with respect to tobacco consumption
and then assess how that may impact the market.
World Situation
Chart 2
• Just to set the stage here you can see that flue-cured is by far the leading tobacco type grown
worldwide accounting for two-thirds of the world’s leaf crop. When combined with burley,
these types together account for about 80 percent of the world’s leaf exports. Dark tobacco
accounts for about 2 percent.
Chart 3
• We see a similar situation when looking at leaf exports. Flue-cured and burley account for
over 70 percent of world leaf trade, with flue-cured again the main type exported at 52
percent. Oriental tobacco is also a significant type traded accounting for nearly 20 percent of
trade.
Chart 4
• Looking at flue-cured, we see that China is by far the leading producer accounting for nearly
57 percent of the world’s flue-cured crop. Other top producers include Brazil, the U.S. and
Zimbabwe. Nearly 80 percent of world flue-cured output is concentrated in these four
countries.
Chart 5
• When looking at the major exporters of flue-cured, we can see that the four top producers
also account for nearly 70 percent of the world’s flue-cured exports.