RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – The traditional chants of the tobacco auctioneer will be silent when flue-cured tobacco markets open this week, replaced by the soft clicks of handheld computers.

A farmers cooperative has provided the computers to buyers this year after farmers won a $200 million settlement against the tobacco industry. They alleged in a lawsuit that the industry had violated antitrust laws by bid-rigging.

With the handheld computers, the tobacco company buyers still will walk in a line along rows of tobacco bundles, but they will press a button when they want to buy the leaf instead of raising their hand or signaling an auctioneer.

The computers count downward through prices, starting with the suggested one, dropping about a cent a second until someone buys the tobacco. Under the auctioneer system, the price started low and was worked upward by the cajoling of the auctioneer.

“All the buyer has to do is push one button when he sees the number he likes,” said Arnold Hamm of The Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corp., which spent about $150,000 on equipment and programming for about 95 computers.

Except for the computers, things will resemble the old auctions. Workers known as markers will write the price and buyer on a ticket for each tobacco pile, and workers following behind the sales line will load the leaf onto trucks. Farmers will walk along the line to check on prices.

For all the high-tech bidding equipment, there will be less tobacco on the floor of 38 warehouses in the flue-cured states of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

“With the decrease in (government) quota, we’re basically growing half of what we grew five years ago,” said Scott Bissette, a tobacco marketing specialist with the state Department of Agriculture.

The absence of two big cigarette makers also means there will be less tobacco to sell. Philip Morris said it was joining R.J. Reynolds in skipping auctions this year in favor of direct contract sales.

In the past three years, about 80 percent of the flue-cured tobacco sold has been under contract.

Sales open Tuesday in towns on the Border Belt, a region comprising southeastern North Carolina and South Carolina.

On Wednesday, tobacco auctions start on the Eastern North Carolina Belt, which includes most of the state’s tobacco growing region.

AP-ES-07-28-03 1454EDT