By Bruce Schreiner
The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - First came a summer dry spell that sunbaked Kentucky's burley tobacco crop. When autumn rains fell, some leaf soaked up too much moisture while hanging in the barns.

Kentucky's top cash crop proved resilient amid such extremes. Much of the crop is rated average or better as it's hauled to contract receiving stations or to auction warehouses, where sales begin Monday.

"My grandfather said you never know about your crop until you have the check in your hand, and that's true with this crop," said John Fritz Jr., a tobacco grower in Fayette and Jessamine counties.

"It started out like we weren't going to get a check," but now he expects his crop's poundage and quality to rival last year's crop.

Scott Althauser, vice president for leaf at the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative, said "there's some good, quality leaf."

Nearly 70 percent of Kentucky's stripped burley recently was rated good or excellent by a crop-reporting service. The rest was ranked mostly as fair. Kentucky is the nation's leading burley tobacco producer.

Like last year, most burley will be sold under contract to tobacco companies - a trend that has auction warehouses struggling for survival.

Contract sales will account for about three-fourths of the burley belt crop, up from about two-thirds last marketing season, said Will Snell, a University of Kentucky tobacco economist.

The rest will be sold at auction warehouses, a precipitous drop for a system that sustained generations of farm families until tobacco companies decided to buy leaf directly from growers.

Beltwide, farmers have designated about 89 million pounds of burley for sale at auction, according to the USDA. Last marketing season, 123.5 million pounds sold at auction. Auction sales totaled 580.7 million pounds for the 1999 crop, before contract sales took root.

The price for contract burley averaged $1.98 per pound during the first four sales days last week, when 19.2 million pounds were delivered, compared with nearly 11 million pounds in the first four days a year ago.

The soggy tobacco curing season led to some burley being turned away initially from contract receiving stations because it was too wet.

Kim Farlow, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA, the largest buyer of U.S. tobacco, said a "small number" of farmers delivered tobacco that didn't meet its moisture specifications.

The growers were encouraged to take the leaf back home, dry it out and bring it back to be reinspected and graded, which is all spelled out in the agreements they signed, she said. An initial rejection has no impact on the price farmers receive for the burley, she said.