From Tobacco to African Veggies

Sounds like a good trade-off to me.

From NPR...

For the past 10 years, farmers in tobacco-growing states have been slowly saying goodbye to that old leaf in favor of other crops.

Of course, there's lots of corn and soy replacing tobacco, but some farms are testing out specialty crops that appeal to recent immigrants. George Bowling's farm in southern Maryland is one such place. He started growing African vegetables about a year ago, but he has worked on farms growing corn and tobacco for much of his 70-something years.

Customers asked Bowling to plant African produce and said they would come to pick it, she says, so he gave it a shot. He ordered specialty seeds for vegetables like "garden eggs" — tiny green African eggplants — and chocolate habanero peppers, and planted them.

If you can find these peppers at a specialty market, they are often expensive or dried out, says Gladys Fontem, who is originally from Cameroon. But there's another reason they come, according to her sister, Ara: "It gives us a taste of home. The smell, the fields — it's like we're back home."

If you're looking to visit the farm, good luck finding it. The NPR story doesn't identify where in southern Maryland (it's a big area) the Bowling Farm is located and a Google search turned up nada. Through a little sleuthing that involved a death notice, I think this is or is close to the location: 38.44246 -76.97163 (input the coordinates into Google Maps).

The full audio from NPR below.