Abra benefits from Virginia tobacco production

Pilar, Philippines (Sun Star) MANUEL Dizon, 61 years old and dapper, sat in a wooden chair inside their farm house in Barangay Villavieja, Pilar, Abra. He lifted a dried tobacco leaf, rolled it into a cigar as we talked.
"It is Virginia tobacco, class A," he said with the kind of enthusiasm you would expect from a man who has been growing quality tobacco most of his life. He was, I thought, the very portrait of his hardworking Ilocano ancestors who pioneered the cultivation of the crop in Abra since the Second World War. With a wrinkled, aged but steady hand, he held the cigar in his mouth and lit it. Continued