North Carolina is predicted to harvest well over 100,000 acres of tobacco this year, and grows most of the flue-cured tobacco produced in the U.S. As farmers and laborers take to the fields to harvest the crop, Due South takes a look at the impact of tobacco on our state – past, present, and future – in an occasional series called “Golden Leaf.”

Our first conversation is with Dr. Blake Brown, a professor emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. He talks with co-host Leoneda Inge about the role of tobacco farming in North Carolina’s economy and discusses some of the big federal policies of the past century that impacted tobacco farming in our state. We also hear from Yesenia Cuello, Executive Director of NC FIELD, who talks to Due South about her own experiences working in tobacco fields as a child, and how the practice persists today. In this occasional series, we'll also talk with public health experts, historians, farmers, and researchers.

In our last segment: gap years. As college students start the fall semester, co-host Leoneda Inge talks with a UNC-Chapel Hill student who took a gap year – instead of going straight from high school to college – about what she learned outside the classroom.