DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Tripp Foy’s sing-song chant rang out like a sentimental oldie for die-hard farmers clinging to the old way of selling tobacco, as a small procession of buyers shadowed him ...

X Tripp Foy (right) hands a tobacco purchase ticket to a buyer at an auction in Danville, Ky. Foy has been doing live tobacco auctions in Kentucky for four decades, and he's one of the last ...

CARROLLTON, Ky. – The photo on the wall at the Growers Tobacco Warehouse shows smiling workers gathered around tobacco bales three years ago, when 13.8 million pounds of tobacco were sold, the ...

MOUNT STERLING, Ky. (AP) — Limited burley tobacco auctions are opening in Kentucky as some farmers cling to the traditional method of selling leaf.

DANVILLE, Ky. -- Tripp Foy's sing-song chant rang out like a sentimental oldie for die-hard farmers clinging to the old way of selling tobacco, as a small procession of buyers shadowed him down ...

But the shakeout among the remaining 151 houses is coming, says Denny Wilson, executive director of the Lexington, Ky.-based Burley Auction Warehouse Association.

At the Loris auction this week, Bell received $1.65 a pound for his tobacco, 2 cents above the government-guaranteed price. If he had been under contract, he said, he would have made 22 cents a ...

In this Nov. 18 photo, auctioneer Tripp Foy, at right, hands a tobacco purchase ticket to a buyer at an auction in Danville, Ky. Foy has been doing live tobacco auctions in Kentucky for four ...

Droves of farmers got out of tobacco as U.S. smoking rates declined. The number of U.S. tobacco farms dropped from 124,270 in 1992 to 16,234 during the last federal crop census in 2007.

In this Nov. 18, 2014, photo, a farmer unloads bales of burley tobacco at the tobacco auction in Danville, Ky. The auctions that take place at the warehouse are some of the few left operating in ...