The big cigarette companies are encouraging farmers in the state to grow more burley tobacco. That's the kind used in cigarettes.
Dane County crops and soil Extension agent David Fischer Phillip Morris and others would like to see a thousand acres of burley grown in the state compared to the one hundred to two hundred acres grown now.
Fischer says the companies like the quality of tobacco grown in the state partly because it has low amounts of nitrosamine, a precursor to a cancer causing carcinogen.
Fischer says most of the tobacco grown here, about one thousand to twelve hundred acres is the type used for chewing tobacco.
While it can net a farmer more per acre than corn, Fischer says tobacco is very expensive to grow. Right now, he says, there seems to be limited interest in bringing tobacco back in a big way due to the economics.