Tobacco farms pinched

CYNTHIANA, Ky. (AP) - After years of faithfully supplying leaf to tobacco giant Philip Morris International, farmer Jess Burrier received a postcard, thanking him for his contributions and telling him his service wasn’t needed this year.
“They were very courteous, but a Dear John letter’s still a Dear John letter,” said Burrier, who has seen the amount of tobacco he grows under contract shrivel from about 600,000 pounds two years ago to 20,000 pounds this year with another leaf buyer.
Kentucky, the nation’s top producer of burley tobacco, a common ingredient in cigarettes, could lose a fourth of its contracts this year, said Will Snell, a University of Kentucky agricultural economist specializing in tobacco. Continued

Image: Field of Burley tobacco on farm of Russell Spears, drying and curing barn in the background, vicinity of Lexington, Ky., 1940 (Marion Post Wolcott/Farm Security Administration).