DAVIESS COUNTY, Ky. — Under a relentless summer sun, Bryan Ebelhar walked through his tobacco fields in Daviess County, inspecting leaves that were browning too soon. Heat and a lack of rain forced the third-generation farmer to harvest quickly to save his crop from ruin, a familiar challenge facing Kentucky’s remaining tobacco growers.

At Ebelhar Farms, where his grandfather began raising tobacco in 1947, Ebelhar balances a fading family legacy with a deep commitment to his Mexican workforce, even as the industry shrinks around him.

Ebelhar’s 50 acres produce dark air-cured tobacco for snuff and chewing tobacco and burley tobacco for cigarettes, a process that demands meticulous care. Workers cut each stalk by hand with hatchets, then use a spike to impale them onto wooden stakes, split

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