Kenneth Anderson’s father taught him what to look for in high-quality tobacco, cured for weeks in the rafters of a Clark County barn. How to “grade” or rate the quality of the different parts of the plant, looking for slight variations of the deep brown color of the dried leaves.
“Tobacco’s always been a crop that you survived on,” Anderson said as he drove his truck over the rolling hills of his land on an early September morning. “Tobacco paid the bills. It paid for the farm. It sent kids to school.”
Growing the cash crop is a part of a family tradition that’s stretched across four generations for Anderson. He first rode a tractor when he was six years old. By the age of 14, he was high in the tobacco barn rafters himself as he placed plants along tobacco sticks to be cured in the fall…