Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 26, 2008 by Bruce Schreiner
MOUNT STERLING, Ky. — Lindsay Pasley is an eager young man in what used to be an older man’s game — tobacco farming.
He recently took 20 tons of his early prepared leaf to Clay’s Tobacco Warehouse in Mount Sterling, due east of Lexington in the Appalachian foothills, where he said he earned enough to “have a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
The auctioneer’s singsong chant still rings out at Clay’s and a few other tobacco-selling sites stubbornly hanging on with limited sales, but not nearly as often.
Clay’s is the last tobacco warehouse standing in Mount Sterling, once home to four. Owner Roger Wilson, who has watched as longtime growers have switched crops or quit farming altogether over the years, hopes to sell more than 2 million pounds this season, comparable to last year but down about half from the days before Congress pulled the plug on a Depression-era buyout program.
Yet Pasley, 28, wants to quadruple his acreage. He has a contract to sell 10 times as much to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. as he did at the auction.
A decade ago, tobacco seemed destined to wither as cigarette companies shelled out tens of billions to settle lawsuits with states