Tobacco growing: myth buster

FACT: In most countries, tobacco growing contributes to less than 1% of the GDP.

The economic contribution of tobacco growing to local and national economies, employment figures and the national balance of trade is usually highlighted by the tobacco industry to prevent governments from adopting strong national tobacco control policies to protect the health of their people.

In reality, there is no direct link between tobacco farming and demand for tobacco leaves in the country. In fact, the global nature of tobacco production and international trade makes it possible to import tobacco leaves from any country in the world. The economic value of tobacco as a profitable business and assured export market is also a common argument against switching to alternative crops.

A large number of tobacco growing economies are facing food insecurity and are dependent on other countries for food. They are using the foreign exchange earned from exporting tobacco leaf to buy food when they have the land to grow food themselves.

Many governments provide credits and loans, or significant subsidies to support tobacco growing so they are paying already highly profitable foreign transnational companies.

Farmers in many countries get government subsidies for tobacco, which is counter to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) (e.g. North Macedonia, Lebanon, etc.). Yet, research consistently demonstrates that many farmers overestimate what they make from tobacco and how much it costs to produce it. Farmers and governments would be better exploring other crops which are more profitable for farmers.

FACT: Tobacco farming contributes to gender inequality and often exploits child labour.

Women are often the primary tobacco farm labourers and are obliged to work long shifts on the farm in addition to performing routine house chores and looking after children. They are therefore more exposed to the health risks of handling green tobacco leaves and heavy chemicals, as well as exposure to tobacco smoke during the curing process. 

An estimated 1.3 million children from poor households often miss school to support their families’ tobacco farming practices. These tasks often include mixing and applying pesticides, harvesting tobacco leaves by hand and tying them to sticks to dry, and sorting and classifying dried tobacco, thereby exposing children to both harmful chemicals and nicotine.

FACT: Smallholders are small-scale farmers who manage areas varying from less than one hectare to 10 hectares, rely primarily on family labour for production and use part of the produce for family consumption. Nonetheless, the tobacco industry targets smallholder farmers to grow a crop that cannot be consumed as food and earns little money for household.

Smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries are often contracted to grow tobacco through legal agreements with large transnational companies or their intermediaries under which tobacco prices and grades (or quality) are determined by the buyer, leaving farmers little room for negotiation. The buyer most often undergrade and therefore underprice the tobacco leaf, and at the same time inflate the cost of the inputs, further disadvantaging the farmers. The prices for tobacco leaf have also decreased since 2013, leaving the farmers with a labour-intensive production with very low profits for the time spent in growing the crop.

Evidence shows that the labour costs of tobacco growing are enormous, as much as double the labour needed to produce other similar crops. The number of hours needed for tobacco growing does not translate to high profits for the farmers. The labour intensiveness of tobacco farming also means they don’t have time to gain education certificates or develop skills to be able to work in other areas where they could earn the family more money.

Additionally, the cost of seeds, fertilizers, wood for fuel and renting or buying land is high and often not factored in when assessing the profitability of tobacco growing. Oftentimes the tobacco industry advances the cost of these, which is then deducted from farmers’ payment at the end of the season. Through this contractual arrangement, farmers end up disadvantaged, dependent and then trapped in a vicious circle of debt, unable to get a fair price for their product. Tobacco companies are able to do this because in most countries there is lack of rural credit programmes for other crops.

It is also important to note that tobacco growing burdens farmers with health issues that can be unique to this activity, such as green tobacco sickness, also increases overall household health-care costs.

FACT: Numerous studies and pilots have shown that there are a number of viable alternative food crop or various crop combinations that provide the farmers with similar or higher incomes than tobacco growing. 

Tobacco is often grown on fertile land that would be very productive if used to grow alternative crops. few examples of healthier, more sustainable alternatives to tobacco include high-iron beans, sunflower, sweet potatoes, maize, sorghum, rice and green vegetables.

The success of alternative crop initiatives is subject to the availability of local market structures to support small holder producers with limited access to standardized quality management practices. This highlights the importance of government support to shape the markets for alternatives, thereby facilitating farmers to shift away from tobacco.

FACT: Farmers grow tobacco because of promise of high returns and long-term benefits but end up under contracts with tobacco or leaf buying companies, meaning that they have a low, but guaranteed income from tobacco leaf. At the same time, they end up trapped in a vicious cycle where they become dependent on the tobacco industry or its front groups.

It is important for governments to provide the support needed to tobacco growing farmers to shift to viable alternative value chains. In many tobacco growing countries, credit is scarce and tobacco farming continues to be perceived by governments and farmers as a source of income/cash to generate revenues that would pay, for example, to support education and health needs of farmers.

There are a growing number of schemes providing alternative options for credit and banking for farmers and these need to reviewed to not allow easy credits to tobacco growing and ensure they are diverted to alternative crops. These actions, along with elimination of direct subsidies to tobacco growing, will lessen farmer’s dependency on tobacco.

FACT: The ITGA and similar front groups use tobacco farmers to represent the interests of a small number of transnational tobacco products manufacturers to “develop the agriculture lobby.” This lobbying pushes public opinion in favour of the tobacco industry and influences policy makers to weaken tobacco control policies.

More information on tobacco industry lobbying groups is available here:

https://tobaccotactics.org/article/Lobby-Groups/

FACT: Tobacco farming leads to severe environmental damage including water pollution, soil degradation, and deforestation.

Tobacco farming accounts for about 5% of total deforestation, further contributing to CO₂ emissions and climate change. To make space for tobacco crops, trees must be cut down and land cleared. It takes roughly one tree to make 300 cigarettes. This leads to desertification and hunger as there is limited fertile land to grow food in some of these regions. Approximately 200 000 hectares (ha) of land are cleared for tobacco agriculture and curing each year, which is equivalent to the size of Mauritius (204 000 ha).

The environmental risks of tobacco leaf production are frequently underreported by the tobacco industry. Downplaying the health and environmental impacts of tobacco growing is a tactic the tobacco industry uses to promote its interests. 

FACT: An estimated 1.3 million children are involved in tobacco growing labour.

The tobacco industry gives a false impression of combating child labour by undertaking so-called corporate social responsibility initiatives and self-reporting its anti-child-labour initiatives. One such initiative is the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation, which hosts board members from British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Japan Tobacco International, among others. These industry tactics are largely aimed at protecting the industry from human rights groups as millions of children continue to work on tobacco farms.

CSR initiatives like the ECLT obscure genuine solutions and undermine diversification strategies, drowning the voices of stakeholders and enabling the tobacco industry to escape culpability.

FACT: Given the global nature of tobacco trade, there is no direct link between supply issues, such as growing tobacco, to demand reduction measures aimed at protecting current and future generations from using tobacco.  

Tobacco control policy drives slow incremental change. The current generation of tobacco farmers will be able to retire or slowly diversify without suddenly losing their livelihood. Tobacco control policies will also protect the health of farmers, their families and communities.

The real source of vulnerability of tobacco farmers is their weak bargaining power against large transnational tobacco companies that can close down a country’s tobacco farming with immediate effect. Diversification and securing alternative income would protect against such vulnerability.

FACT: The tobacco industry uses many “green washing” tactics to downplay the adverse impact of tobacco growing on the environment (such as water pollution, soil depletion, and deforestation) and on farming communities’ health and wellbeing (green tobacco sickness from tobacco leaves and children being out of school, working on farms).

The tobacco industry employs corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to divert attention from harms of tobacco growing. The industry has set up several organizations and programmes which aim to support the livelihoods of tobacco-growing communities through crop diversification methods and schemes that aim to improve living standards of farmers. Introducing new crops while continuing to grow tobacco does not eliminate the risks of tobacco growing. These efforts divert public attention away from the real costs of tobacco farming, such as poor health outcomes, environmental degradation and poverty.

Other greenwashing initiatives like tree planting divert attention from the industry’s environmentally damaging practices and helps them avoid being held accountable, and planting a few trees for a quick harvest will not replace the natural quality of the millennia old forests that are cut down every year for curing tobacco leaf. 

FACT:  Tobacco use is the single most preventable form of premature deaths due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, respiratory disorders, heart diseases, etc. NCDs form the highest share of healthcare costs which burden on most economies including in LMICs and LDCs.

The WHO FCTC provides an overarching and enabling set of actions to reduce the use of tobacco, by adoption of evidence-based solutions. More than 180 countries have adopted the WHO FCTC for achieving their goal of health for all.

WHO supports global efforts to achieve better health for all including, accelerated implementation of WHO FCTC in line with SDG commitments, specifically Target 3,a.

That means supporting farmers to grow crops that are healthy and sustainable for them and their communities.  Evidence shows that tobacco farmers’ income and wellbeing could improve if they diversified away from tobacco to food crops.

Governments, international organizations, NGOs and private companies need to work together to help farmers diversify away from tobacco to healthy food crops by ensuring that they have easy access to more profitable markets.

Article 17 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) states that Parties “shall, in cooperation with each other and with competent international and regional intergovernmental organizations, promote, as appropriate, economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers and, as the case may be, individual sellers”. The WHO FCTC does not aim to penalize tobacco growers and workers, but instead to promote economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers and, as the case may be, individual sellers who will be affected by a reduction of tobacco consumption.