New ways don't solve old woes for farmers.

• Position: Agriculture

Almost as quickly as you can smoke a cigarette, Tar Heel tobacco farmers have changed the way they sell their leaf. About 80% skipped warehouse auctions in 2001 to sell their crops directly to cigarette makers. The year before, only 5% chose that path.

In doing so, they are turning their backs on a Tar Heel tradition that was, for many, a rite of autumn. Fall would find warehouses filled with bales of bright leaf. Buyers stalked the rows, finding, feeling and sniffing the tobacco they wanted to bid for. The auctioneer's spiel, like a magic incantation, created checks for school clothes and new pickup trucks to the delight of farmers and merchants alike.

That was part of the problem, says Talmadge Burgess, a Vance County grower. On opening day and other days, he had to spend hours away from his farm, just waiting. In 2000, he started contracting with Chester, Va.-based Star Scientific, which guaranteed him $2 a pound, about 20 cents more than the state average. In 2001, he sold by contract everything from from the 60 acres he cultivated.

The decline of tobacco warehouses has been dramatic. In 1973, 438 held auctions for fluecured tobacco. Last year, only 67 did, though some others had been converted into receiving stations for contract leaf.

An even bigger change for tobacco farmers could come this year. Agriculture secretaries in six states, including North Carolina, have agreed to pursue a buyout of the tobacco quota system. The quota is the amount of tobacco that the federal government allows growers to sell under its price-support system. Owners can grow their quotas or lease them to others. The hitch: No one knows how to pay for the buyout, expected to cost $16 billion.

The quota would be replaced by government licenses, which would not be transferable. Once a farmer quit using one, it would revert to the government. That should prevent overproduction, which plagues nearly every other commodity grown in the state. Many had record or near-record yields in 2001 -- and saw their prices plummet.

N.C. Agriculture Department spokesman Mike Blanton says soybean production fell just shy of the record set in 2000. But the average price was $4.05 a pound, compared with $7.07 five years ago. It was the same with many other crops. "We had more cotton planted this year than at any time in the state history -- more than a million acres -- and cotton prices are just horrible." They averaged 30.5 cents a pound, compared with 72 cents in 1996. Corn was...