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Tropical Storm Closing In on the Carolinas  

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — With wary eyes cast at Hurricane Ike farther out at sea, coastal Carolina residents prepared on Friday for gusting winds and torrential rain as Tropical Storm Hanna sped toward them. The storm was expected to make landfall near the North Carolina-South Carolina border early Saturday. . . .

Beach erosion was a major concern here, and farm workers were hustling to harvest tobacco and corn crops before the storm hit.

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Rains cheer SE farmers, but deluge late for some 

Farmers in the drought-stricken Southeast halfheartedly celebrated downpours from the remnants of Tropical Storm Fay last month, when several inches of rain took the edge off a potentially disastrous season. . . .

The rains were a mixed blessing for farmers growing North Carolina's top crop, tobacco. It won't help the amount of tobacco grown, but the quality should improve, said North Carolina State University crop science professor Loren Fisher.

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Tobacco Heritage Trail plan slated for unveiling  

Roanoke River Rails to Trails is rolling out the Master Plan for the Tobacco Heritage Trail. A presentation of the project is being held Wednesday, Sept. 3 at 7 p.m. in the basement auditorium of the Brunswick County Government Building located at 100 Tobacco St., Lawrenceville. The two-year effort was funded by a grant from the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Program.

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Tobacco Women Meet Tonight in Delhi  

The Tobacco Women of Ontario will meet again tonight in Delhi. Last Monday, they met with Elgin-Middlesex-London MP Joe Preston in St Thomas to discuss the layout of the Federal buyout plan for tobacco growers. Member Karen Csoff says they'll continually seek details of the Federal funding announced earlier this month, because as of now, the issue is simply not finished. Csoff adds they're disappointed with Ontario's notion last week that a Provincial buyout is "out of order" at this time.

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Zimbabwe Tobacco Output Seen Rising, Even as Seed Sales Decline  

Zimbabwe may double production of tobacco next year, even after seed sales declined by 10 percent, the state-owned Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board said.

The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, which represents most farmers in the southern African nation, said seed-sales data isn't sufficient to determine a forecast of output because large quantities are smuggled to neighboring countries. About 434 kilograms (957 pounds) of seed has been sold this year, compared with 482 kilograms in 2007-08, the Harare-based TIMB said.

``The amount of seed sold this year is sufficient to produce 130 million kilograms of tobacco'' next year, Andrew Matibiri, chief executive officer of the board, said by phone today. Production this year may total 65 million kilograms, the Sunday Mail reported on July 21.

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Cuba weighs huge Gustav damage  

HURRICANE Gustav damaged 100,000 homes and devastated schools, power supplies and tobacco crops in western Cuba, officials said today . . . .

In a blow to the key tobacco industry, more than 3,414 fragile warehouses were also destroyed, said Olga Tapia, first secretary of the Communist Party in Pinar del Rio, adding that heavy rains had soaked 906 tons of tobacco leaves.

Ms Tapia said the leaves could be dried out but did not give a value for the estimated damage to the harvest.

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• Cuba says Gustav damaged more than 90,000 houses 

Cuba said on Monday more than 90,000 houses were damaged or destroyed when Hurricane Gustav tore through the western province of Pinar del Rio on Saturday with 150-mile-per-hour (240-kph) winds. . . .

The top official of the ruling Communist Party in Pinar del Rio, the main growing region for Cuba's famed tobacco, said more than 4 million pounds (1.8 million kg) of the leaf, already harvested and in warehouses, had been damaged by Gustav, but that efforts were being made to salvage them.

Cuba produces about 80 million pounds (36 million kg) of tobacco annually.

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Gustav's 'pure terror' for Cubans 

There are no figures yet as to the cost of the damage from Hurricane Gustav . . .

Pinar del Rio is a mainly rural area with little industry apart from its famous tobacco fields.

The harvest was already in but the valuable leaves were being cured in flimsy thatched wooden sheds.

They were desperately trying to move half a million sacks of leaves to safer places before Gustav arrived.

But almost 1,000 tonnes of tobacco leaves still got soaked in the rain.

The price and availability of Cuban cigars could be another casualty of Hurricane Gustav.

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• Farmers standing by tobacco, particularly as researchers find new uses for crop 

After a few ups and downs, including the War Between the States, which destroyed half the state's tobacco crop, South Carolina's "bright leaf" production rebounded, thanks to a top-quality crop and a heavy-smoking population.

Today, the Palmetto State's tobacco crop is considered one of the highest-quality, flue-cured leaves available, and demand has remained steady, despite the war on smoking here in the United States.

"Consumption here in this country has definitely gone down, but demand for our tobacco is up," . . .

While international smoking trends continue to drive up demand for South Carolina's tobacco, researchers are studying alternative uses for the plant.

"It's a plant that produces a fair amount of soluble protein in its biomass," explains Bruce Fornum,

Ph.D., of Clemson University's Pee Dee Research and Education Center, "So there's the opportunity to genetically modify that tobacco to produce other proteins that might be useful - possibly as an industrial protein or as a pharmaceutical protein. That would give tobacco farmers another avenue. . . .

Five or ten years from now, tobacco farmers could wind up in the pharmaceutical industry.

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Gustav slams Cuba as Cat 4 storm; many evacuated 

Gustav howled into Cuba's Isla de Juventud as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane on Saturday while both Cubans and Americans scrambled to flee the path of the fast-growing storm.

Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it powered its way toward mainland Cuba, where authorities were hurriedly evacuating more than 240,000 people from the nation's tobacco-rich western tip. . . .

The government said it had evacuated some 190,000 people from low-lying parts of westernmost Cuba, Pinar del Rio province, where the tobacco for the island's famed cigars is grown.

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• Cuba's tobacco crop devastated by 140mph winds 

Cubans emerged from their shelters to discover that the Category 4 storm had spared their lives but laid waste to vast tracts of the island's tobacco industry.

Winds of 140mph crashed into the western edge of the Caribbean island where much of the country's vital tobacco crop is grown, toppling telegraph poles and ripping off tin roofs.

Approximately 250,000 Cubans had been evacuated before Gustav crashed into Cuba's Isla de la Juventud before hitting the mainland further north at Pinar del Rio.

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Tobacco harvest expected to be better than in 2007  

Weather conditions are proving to be better this summer than last year for area burley tobacco farmers.

"We had lots of rain early in the season," said Mason County Agriculture and Natural Resource Agent Bill Peterson.

Peterson said currently it is looking like this years crop will be "average," still an improvement over last year's crop which endured drought conditions.

Dr. William Bailey of the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture said, "There's been much improvement from last year."

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Hurricane Gustav Weakens In Gulf Of Mexico 

Gustav slammed into Cuba on Saturday afternoon, first raking over the Isle of Youth 40 miles off the southwestern coast, then coming ashore in Pinar del Rio, the island's western-most province and main tobacco region.

Cuban officials said the storm knocked over trees, damaged buildings, demolished banana plantations . . .

Ahead of the storm, workers in Cuba's prized cigar industry moved recently harvested tobacco to safety.

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Production of leaf has declined  

Tobacco plants have given way to grapevines on the rolling hills of the Williams farm in Pittsylvania County.

The green swath of vines growing on a 9-acre plot represent an investment in a future that increasingly looks tobacco-free for Joe Williams.

"We have three children and they have families of their own, and everybody is investing," in the vineyard, said Williams, who grew tobacco for more than 30 years but began a transition to grapes three years ago. "This is something that we came up with that everyone could get something out of and still be on the farm." . . .

Jim Jennings, a tobacco grower in Mecklenburg County, dropped out of tobacco for one year in 2005, but is now growing the crop again.

"Some people have gotten out and the ones who have stayed have gotten a little bigger," said Jennings, who said he has avoided putting settlement payments back into his tobacco operation. "I have used it to educate children, though," he said.

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A new weapon to fight cancer - tobacco plants 

scientists in Arizona and elsewhere believe tobacco plants may hold the key to developing a personalized cancer vaccine as well as treatments for other diseases.

The experiments are part of a growing field of plant-based biotechnology, and the cancer treatment has gained enough traction to interest the likes of German drug giant Bayer.

"Most important is that the vaccine has been successfully used in human clinical trials," said Charles Arntzen, director of the ASU Biodesign Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology.

The made-to-order vaccine has been tested in an early-stage clinical trial, and it showed an immune response in 70 percent of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients without harmful side effects.

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