CRAZY TOBACCO CHANGED GROWERS' LIVES

VERA CRUZ, Brazil Juca Schneider hadn't seen anything like it in 30 years
as a tobacco field instructor.

The dark green plants towered above him, 12 feet high, 7 feet taller than
regular varieties. From the stalks sprang broad leaves with veins that
bulged like a body builder's.

"Even out in the field, I had a hard time approaching the stuff without
getting dizzy" because of the plant's high nicotine content, Schneider said.

"That smell was heavy; felt cold in my lungs. It made the back of my neck
crawl."

"After that day," he recalled years later; "I knew the tobacco wouldn't be
the same around here again."

That was November 1987. Souza Cruz field technicians had been handing out
seeds for something they called "alternative" tobacco.

Grow more, grow bigger; was the motto.

It did. And it began to change the rhythm of life for the growers and their
families.

Rural folk in the Rio Pardo Valley had always lived without wall clocks and
appointment ledgers. The harvest had always given rhythm to the year
Weddings, trips, baptisms and almost everything else was put off until a
harvest ended and until a crop was sold. But the new tobacco came up a lot
quicker; flowering a lot sooner than the old types.

"That started throwing off a lot of folks," said Amy de Oliveira, who has
cultivated tobacco 20 of his 36 years.

"I mean, people would have plans for other crops, family matters and the
like, and then all of a sudden there you were, looking at a harvest." Word
started getting around that the new tobacco was louco. Crazy. Crazy tobacco.

"Right around that time, 1990, the company had a number of new tobacco
lines coming out that caused a fuss," said Decio Mallmann, a Souza Cruz
field technician for 28 years who retired in 1992 to become mayor of a
neighboring municipality; "Some of these lines were hard to cure, hard to
cultivate. They were wild tobaccos. Some were especially high in nicotine."

Farmers found they could get in more harvests by altering their growing
practices.

They spaced their plants further apart, topped them earlier; used higher
and higher amounts of nitrogen fertilizers.

They spent more time in the fields, in the barns, in the kilns. "You got
to keep a closer eye on the louco; it needs lots of care," said de
Oliveira, who has grown tobacco in the region for more than 15 years on his
7acre farm.

"Men who've got a good wife call a curse. Of course, those with a bad one
call it a blessing."