India
At a recent conference on Alternative Crops to FCV Tobacco in Andhra Pradesh held in the Central Tobacco Research Institute, the chairman of the Tobacco Board G. Kamalavardhana Rao stated that tobacco farmers would be willing to switch their crop from tobacco to something else if they were properly compensated for the change.
Some 2,500 farmers in Andhra Pradesh had offered to switch to alternative crops for a compensation of Rs500,000 (US$10,100) per barn. Rao said the issue had been referred to the Union Commerce Ministry.
He noted that the following few years would be difficult as Brazil and Zimbabwe had enormous stocks of 200-300 million kg of tobacco and farmers should follow the prescribed crop size strictly.
The farmers, he pointed out, had not been able to control production during the previous season, as farmers in Karnataka had grown almost 128 million kg, but the surplus had been reduced substantially this season, thanks to the efforts of the Tobacco Board.
