Efforts to Sustain Higher Prices
With the over supply of tobacco the English market became extremely discriminating in regard to the quality of the leaf it would purchase. The colonial government from time to time resorted to legislative expedients to prevent the shipment of inferior grades. Governor Wyatt, in 1621 ordered that "for every head they should plant but 1,000 plants of tobacco and upon each plant nine leaves." John Rolfe also stated, in 1619, that, "An industrious man not otherwaies imploied may well tend foure akers of corne, and 1,000 plants of tobacco." A thousand plants would give each worker about 112 pounds of tobacco a year. In 1628, an inspection law was enacted and in 1640, it was ordered that all bad tobacco and half the good should be destroyed.
Governor Berkeley, in 1664, made several ineffectual attempts to form agreements, with the planters of Maryland and North Carolina, to restrict the production of tobacco. The planters of each colony were willing for those of the other to stop planting, or to destroy as much tobacco as they pleased; but looking to their own selfish interests they would increase rather than decrease their crop. The Virginia General Assembly, in 1666, prohibited all culture of tobacco but the Maryland authorities complained that the law was ignored by the Virginia planters.
The Virginia colonists developed a keen rivalry among themselves in efforts to improve the quality of the leaf grown. Reverend John Clayton, in 1688, says: "For there is not only two distinct sorts of sweet-scented and Aranoko tobacco but of these be several sorts, much different, the seeds whereof are known by distinct names, of those gentlemen most famed for such sort of tobacco, as of prior seed etc."
The Aranoko, probably from the Orinoco river region in South America, was grown on the heavy clay soils. The product was a strong tobacco that was most in demand in Germany and other North European countries. The sweet-scented was grown on the lighter sandy soils and although the yield was less it brought a better price on the market. Hugh Jones, in his Present State of Virginia, in 1724, mentions one of the many localities in Virginia which became noted for a particular variety of tobacco grown there. To quote: "For on York River in a small tract of land called Digges Neck, which is poorer than a great deal of other land in the same latitude, by a particular seed and management, is made the famous crop known by the name of E Dees, remarkable for its mild taste and fine smell."
Topping the growing tobacco plants was a practice originated by the colonists. The main purpose was to limit the production to the large lower leaves and to do away with the small immature leaves at the top of the stem. The General Assembly often specified the number of leaves which could be left; the number, varying with the value placed on the leaf in England, ranged usually from six to nine.
Tobacco is a soil exhausting crop. The Jamestown planters soon learned that continuous crops of tobacco, on the same land, soon reduced both the quantity and quality of the leaf. The only resource left to the tobacco farmers was to clear new fields. The more well-to-do planters began to seek favorable locations of uncleared land. The depleted fields were abandoned and the task of restoring their productivity was usually left to nature. Much of the best tobacco soils of Virginia have been cropped and then allowed to go back to brush and tress and again cleared several times. Finding the remains of old tobacco rows out in dense woods is not an uncommon experience. This exhaustion of tobacco lands had a beneficial influence on the agricultural development of Virginia. By the time the fields were abandoned, most of the stumps had decayed and the soil could be prepared for seeding to other crops with plow and harrows. It was found that these depleted fields were still capable of producing satisfactory crops of grain. Many of the colonists who were not financially able to clear new grounds could often buy or rent these abandoned fields for a nominal price.