Tobacco growing compounds the food security and nutrition issues faced by low- and middle-income countries: scarce arable land is not being used to grow much needed food crops and forests are being destroyed to create room for tobacco production and as fuel for curing the tobacco leaves.

Tobacco farmers are exposed to a number of health risks, including green tobacco sickness, which is caused by nicotine absorbed through the skin from the handling of wet tobacco leaves, exposure to heavy use of pesticides and exposure to tobacco dust. The environment also suffers greatly due to deforestation, contamination of water sources and degradation of soil. Tobacco growing is also associated with child labour and gender inequality.

 Meanwhile, the tobacco industry continues to hamper attempts to substitute tobacco growing with sustainable food crops. In most countries, farmers have had trouble shifting away from tobacco because of the incentives provided by the industry, such as seeds, financing, access to agricultural training, and an assured market. Despite typically yielding net economic losses overall, tobacco is an assured market that generates small windfalls of cash, which makes moving away from tobacco challenging from a farmer’s perspective.

 While tobacco is erroneously perceived to be a profitable cash crop, the tobacco industry exaggerates its economic importance. In most tobacco growing countries, the contribution of tobacco leaf imports and exports is small (<1% GDP). The lack of government support and viable market for alternative crops further hampers the ability of tobacco farmers to switch to alternative livelihoods.

Evidence reveals that alternative value chains could provide at least the same, if not more, return to farmers as compared to tobacco growing provided the same supportive farming and marketing system is in place.