NCSU Researchers Receive Burley Tobacco Grant

Source from:  wkyt.com  04/18/2005

RALEIGH, N.C. A foundation established to help tobacco-dependent communities diversify has given a grant to researchers to help farmers outside western North Carolina grow burley tobacco. The Golden LEAF Foundation, which receives half the state's tobacco settlement, has approved a grant of around 264 (t) thousand dollars for scientists at North Carolina State University. The scientists will research burley production and teach farmers in the Piedmont and eastern parts of the state to cure it. For more than 65 years, the federal tobacco-quota system kept burley tobacco confined mainly to the hills of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. But those geographic restrictions disappeared with the federal buyout of the quota system. With leaf prices falling after the buyout, many small-scale burley growers in Tennessee and Kentucky are expected to stop growing tobacco. In Kentucky, the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative predicts a 30 percent decline in the burley harvest this year. Kentucky has traditionally been the country's largest burley tobacco producer. Endtiem