Chris Chmura was recently quoted in Reseeding Virginia’s tobacco region

The program also is a good deal for Virginia’s former tobacco region, which stretches across 41 counties and cities in Southern and Southwest Virginia. The region has been stuck for decades with an anemic economy in which employment growth has been slow or nonexistent. In the 12 years from 1997 to 2009, Virginia averaged 1.2 percent annualized growth in employment, according to data from Chmura Economics & Analytics, a Richmond-based firm. In that same period Southern Virginia averaged 0.7 percent annualized drop in jobs, while Southwest Virginia had zero job growth. The steep drop in tobacco production and the loss of manufacturing and textile jobs — and the deep recession of 2008 — has made things even tougher. “If you don’t go to college, what’s open to you would probably be retail or factory,” Farrar says.