Two young Piedmont growers stake their future on tobacco

(GoDanRiver) David Parsons drives a tractor as it inches down a row of tobacco rising sunward from the soil of Pittsylvania County. Migrant workers follow, capped heads bent in concentration as hands fly.
Snap, snap, snap. They break yellow-green leaves as long as their arms off shoulder-high stalks of tobacco. They pile the leaves on the tractor’s trailer, variously called a slide or sled, with practiced fluidity. Continued