Assisting Tobacco Farmers and their communities with diversifying from tobacco - Walter Thompson Dundas Virginia, 1/27/01 9:01AM

Flue cured and Burley tobacco farmers and their communities will need assistance to diversify or reduce the amount of tobacco being planted. These farmer's and their communities have spent their life time producing tobacco. They have lots of equipment that is only useful to them as tobacco farmers. These farmer's have worker's and agribusiness that depend on them for their income.
I believe that the buy out of quota is one way of getting money back to these farmers and their communities. What a fair compensation for quota is I do not know, but the cost of changing a way of life is expensive. Please think about this you are asking thousands if not millions of people to change their lives and go in to a new and cloudy future.