Clouds on horizon won't bring relief for farmers.

• Position: North Carolina's agriculture industry - Industry Overview

After picking peanuts until sundown on a cool October day, Walter Stalls was in a cheery mood. Though his corn crop was disappointing, he had made his tobacco quota, and some lucky cloudbursts in his part of Martin County had helped avoid the ravages of an August dry spell.

But there's trouble on the horizon. His future tobacco profits are threatened by a hot-air, high-pressure system centered around Washington, D.C. A bill introduced by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, threatens to phase out by 1999 the quota system that regulates the nation's tobacco supply and by 2001 the price supports that ensure farmers a good return. The bill, shelved until the 1998 session, would force tobacco companies to pony up $15 billion more than the $368.5 billion settlement negotiated between them and 40 state attorneys general. The government would then buy out quota holders and make transitional payments for three years to producers.

For farmers who rent allotments, ending the quota system would cut costs but put many of them out of business. Quotas would likely be replaced by contracts between tobacco companies and their favorite farmers, Stalls says. "If you don't get the contract, you're going to have to look at other ways to make it."

But it isn't only tobacco in the doghouse. Farming has been cited as a possible contributor to the growing threat of pfiesteria, a nasty single-celled organism blamed for fish kills and for memory loss in humans. Scientists think there might be a link to nutrients that wash from farmland into coastal streams, but state and federal lawmakers want more proof and have called for studies.

If the winds of change are blowing in Washington and Raleigh, at least the winds of nature didn't blow the way they did in 1996. Estimated tobacco production for 1997 was up 17% over 1996's hurricane-thinned crop. The average yield, 2,194 pounds per acre, was 7% better than in '96. Prices, however, dipped in September, forcing government-financed cooperatives to buy millions of pounds at the supported price.

The market was kinder to pork producers, with prices for feed corn down 22% and for hogs up 3%. Since 1990, North Carolina's hog herd has swelled from 2.8 million to 10 million. There was even talk the state might overtake Iowa as the nation's leading pork producer. But the General Assembly slapped a two-year moratorium on farms with more than 250 swine to deal with...