This old barn, this new money: tobacco farmers are in trouble. Except that is, the ones who have discovered a lucrative alternative.

• Author: Halweil, Brian
• Position: Traditionalist tobacco farmers switch to organic farming and findhealth and economic benefits

From the outside, this old barn in Stickleyvile, Virginia looks like any other barn you might find among the remote mountain hollows of Appalachia. Rough pine and hemlock siding keeps out the rain and wind. Chestnut and oak beams hold up the roof. Rows of curing tobacco plants hang from the rafters, their tints of lemon, orange, and mahogany reflecting the autumn colors of the surrounding hillsides.

The barn stands in the shadow of Powell Mountain, a long, thin sandstone ridge in the southwestern corner of Virginia that is wedged between eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, about midway along the Appalachian mountain range that stretches across the eastern United States from Georgia to Maine. The Powell River runs below and parallel to the ridge, through the prime farmland it has carved out over the millennia-now Powell Valley. The next ridge to the south is Clinch Mountain, flanked by its own valley and river. Stone Mountain is to the North.

What sets this barn apart from its neighbors is the recent addition of a new refrigerator and packing shed for vegetables-one of the reasons why a handful of local growers have gathered here on a rainy morning. The men sit on stools and boxes in a new office built into the barn's loft. The office is solid, but unpainted and without finishing touches. Despite the very traditional hanging tobacco (a local grower-not present-is renting the space), a big change is brewing here.

Among the unlikely pioneers who have come to discuss this change is Sam Askins, a 54-year-old farmer whose family has been raising tobacco in nearby Russell County since 1786. "Growin' 'bacco is a bad habit," Askins says with a chuckle, as he adjusts his bright orange hunting cap. "So I quit."

For generations, local farmers have gathered in barns at this time of year to bundle their cured tobacco for auction. But this year, Askins has been working to rescue the last of his organic bell pepper crop from the coming frost. He has brought 61 boxes of peppers to the barn to be sorted, cleaned, and boxed in the new packing shed. The peppers are bound for an Atianta branch of Whole Foods Market, a U.S. chain believed to be the largest organic foods retailer in the world.

Other local growers have come here to admire Sam Askins' harvest and plan what organic crops they will raise next year themselves--mainly for Food City, a local grocery chain--and to discuss the reasons they are all kicking tobacco in favor of organic farming.

"I used to get sicker than a dog, with fever, burning skin, and nausea, if I wasn't real careful with the chemicals I sprayed on tobacco," says Askins. He became particularly leery of flumetralin, a plant growth inhibitor and herbicide marketed as Prime Plus, that farmers use to control the suckers that sprout at the base of the tobacco plant in spring. "I usually ran a low grade fever, with my skin itching and...