Salad days dawn in tobacco's twilight.

• Position: AGRICULTURE

North Carolina's hottest agricultural fad is spreading from one end of the state to the other, and a $54 million Dole Food processing plant to open in 2007 in Gaston County will accelerate its movement. It's crop diversity. And as tobacco fades from the spotlight, the state's terrain and soil make it ideal for a variety of other products.

North Carolina already is one of the nation's most agriculturally diverse states, and millions of dollars became available last year for even more experimentation. In 2005, Tar Heel tobacco farmers and quota holders received more than $160 million from the state's share of a $246 billion settlement against tobacco companies eight years ago. They also received $384 million in payouts from the federal buyout of their tobacco acreage allotments, to be followed by $3.4 billion more during the remaining nine years of the program.

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The Dole plant should encourage diversity by expanding the local market for fresh lettuce and other produce. California-based Ventria Bioscience further diversified the state's crop mix in 2005 by planting 70 acres in the Northeast with genetically modified rice, engineered to produce artificial human milk and saliva proteins that could be used in drugs or food for infants in developing countries.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of farmers trying new things," says Jim Cummings, environmental-programs manager for the N.C. Department of Agriculture. "I get three to four calls a week from people saying, 'What do I do with my farm now that there's not going to be tobacco?'"

Rest assured that farmers are still growing tobacco in North Carolina, but the crop dropped from 168,300 acres in 2002 to 156,100 acres in 2004, the year the nation's tobacco-subsidy program ended, and another decease was expected in 2005. The program paid quota holders a guaranteed price that made even small tobacco acreages profitable. But it also made U.S.-grown leaf too pricey for tobacco companies.

More Tar Heel farmers will quit growing tobacco this year, says N.C. State University tobacco economist Blake Brown. As expected, prices dropped after the subsidies ended, and an increase in fuel costs has pinched margins, especially those of farmers without tobacco-company contracts. Acreage could increase during the next few years, as successful contract farmers raise the size of the average Tar Heel tobacco farm from about 50 acres to 150 acres or more, Brown says.

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This year...