With an unemployment rate of 17.08 percent, Krumovgrad's hope for economic revitalization seems to be ebbing with the ever-growing tide of workers, students and migr s seeking their livelihood elsewhere. Tobacco farming The land surrounding Krumovgrad in the K rdjali region is almost entirely covered with green tobacco fields. South Bulgaria's temperate and dry summer climate makes it ripe for tobacco farming. Planted in the early spring and harvested in the autumn, the annual tobacco crop is often times a family's only source of income. Many other families grow tobacco on smaller tracts of land as a supplement to their regular, poverty level wages.
Tobacco farming is by no means highly profitable.
Resources and farming equipment are scarce. The work is time consuming, backbreaking and dirty. People for whom tobacco is the only means of survival work large tracts of land, beginning before sunrise and remaining in the fields until long after sunset. Those who have full-time work sacrifice their evenings and weekends either to tend their own fields or to assist family or friends who work the land. Although a full season lasts over half the year, the cash that a family brings in for its efforts is minimal.