ITGA Demands Dialog Between Growers and Global Tobacco Control

By the International Tobacco Growers’ Association

Tobacco growers from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America gathered at the International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) Annual Meeting in Litohora, Greece on October 16-17 this year, asking governments and institutions to open a line of formal dialogue with international bodies to address the sector’s challenges due to a decrease in demand for tobacco products and the absence of viable alternative crops.

Continued declines in the demand for tobacco will lead many countries around the world to see a drastic drop in employment and family income. Without a concerted effort to find alternatives for tobacco growers who, to this date, have not been guided toward viable solutions, the situation can only get worse.

Politically, we witness the spreading of several small conflicts, the deepening of the Middle East crisis, and the growing potential for much bigger conflicts around the South China Sea, North Korea, and Eastern Europe. There is also a growing redesign of the more popular parties in developed world democracies with relevant consequences for the continuity of long-established trends in parties’ programs. All this has created a much greater unpredictability of business environments, namely in the tobacco sector and particularly in tobacco production.

There are, nevertheless, some unshaken realities: The present population of over 900 million smokers will remain stable for, at least, a decade. The population of the world will go from the present 7.5-9.0 billion in 2050, which will mean that food production will have to increase steeply in the coming decades, even years.

Tobacco growers at the ITGA meeting have been following closely the regulation of the tobacco sector which has forced the shrinkage of the legal market for tobacco products to a point where only three countries now have forecasts of increasing smokers’ prevalence in those countries’ population. As regulation depends on the political environment, it is almost as unpredictable as the general political scenery - almost, because the main trend will not disappear: smoking will never be totally free again all over the world.

But, the pace of the de-normalization of smoking may slow down. Growers and their associations keep preparing themselves for an uncertain future of more radical regulations, and even one of the main companies is anticipating a smoke-free world. Philip Morris International (PMI) has just created its Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, betting on the replacement of traditional cigarettes by the heat-not-burn type and will fund it with a billion dollars for 12 years. British American Tobacco (BAT) and Japan Tobacco Inc. (JTI) also have their own type of heat-not-burn products and are speeding up distribution as they do not want to fall behind.

The future of those products is highly important for tobacco growers as they are the only alternative to traditional cigarettes that still have tobacco inside.

And that future, beyond the customers’ preference, will depend a lot on taxation and regulation. Several governments are already looking at the possible income from taxing these products just like cigarettes but there are also other governments who think they should tax them less to favor the switch from traditional cigarettes. Regulation will be decisive. If they are treated like traditional cigarettes with all the bans and limitations that these already have it will be almost impossible for the companies to advertise them and show their advantages.

Another point of concern for growers is the recent announcement of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding the implementation of a policy to reduce nicotine in cigarettes. This measure will influence other policymakers outside of the US and will finally come down to the most vulnerable part of the tobacco value chain, the growers. For them, it will be almost commercially impossible to produce leaf with such low levels of nicotine. Besides, the reduction of nicotine will make the sale of traditional cigarettes almost impossible too, pushing consumers to illicit products that do not respect such limits; and therefore, the demand for legal tobacco will drop sharply without any alternative plan for tobacco growers around the world.

Growers had already faced that threat from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and it is still there, albeit in standby. ITGA continues to follow very closely the debates being held by FCTC. Many of the subjects being discussed in FCTC meetings concern tobacco growers across the world, particularly Articles 17 and 18, which relate directly to tobacco production as they refer to alternatives to tobacco production and the environmental impact of tobacco growing. Growers have been offering their help and their expertise to define measures that will directly affect their future. The legitimate growers’ representatives could have helped the government delegations attending FCTC meetings to have a much more realistic view of the present situation of tobacco growing around the world.

Growers insist that FCTC must return to its original mandate under Article 17, as was reiterated at the previous Conference of the Parties (COP6) in Moscow.  Said COP6 reaffirmed the importance of carrying out studies and research to identify alternative crops that could provide a level of income and assured export markets equal to those provided by tobacco.  For this reason, it was agreed upon that pilot projects in tobacco-growing regions would be necessary to demonstrate the long-term feasibility of such alternative crops. FCTC continues to exclude growers and their representatives from the discussions being held about matters having a direct impact on tobacco production and therefore, on growers’ livelihoods. Growers are a legitimate part of this process and have been asking for their inclusion into FCTC’s debates.

With COP8 already on the horizon the growers will have to be prepared for a new wave of dangerous proposals. This time we can also expect direct attacks on tobacco production, given the aggressive report on the impact of tobacco growing released last spring by FCTC, referring almost only to the negative impacts with totally biased, and in many cases totally unscientific views, particularly on possible alternatives to tobacco and highly exaggerated positions on problems like child labor, deforestation, soil erosion, and water management.

Growers keep insisting on the fact that they are committed to working in a compliant manner, following good agricultural practices in order to produce a crop supplying a legal market of more than 900 million consumers and that such crop provides a livelihood to millions of farmers, rural workers, and their families around the world. They also agree on the efforts to be made to improve tobacco production and sustainability in order to address challenges such as child labor and deforestation, as well as accept the need of regulating consumption of tobacco products, but insist that regulatory measures should be balanced and based on science, not on personal opinions, so as to prevent such measures from having a devastating impact on the livelihoods of millions of tobacco farmers and labourers, without achieving any of the desired aims of tobacco control. 

Even so, some aggressive proposals against the growers are expected in the coming COP besides the usual ones on plain packaging, high taxation of tobacco products, ingredients and possibly, nicotine reduction in cigarettes.

Any of the foreseeable scenarios carries an almost certain future reduction in the demand for tobacco products and ITGA members and tobacco growers, in general, need to begin adapting to this reality.

Prices have been stable or falling as many countries have not reduced their production and there are some still increasing it. A price crash has not happened yet because the weather has reduced production in some of the biggest producers, but the forecast for the next crop is not a pleasant one. If the weather is favorable the sector may have more than 200,000 tons of oversupply, particularly in flue-cured. ITGA has been insisting on the need to foster diversification and some of our members have already gone a long way in that path, but a lot more needs to be done and, as FCTC is doing almost nothing in the support for research on diversification, ITGA and its associations will have to find ways of doing it.

Tobacco growers attending  ITGA’s annual meeting signed a declaration requesting governments and international bodies:

- To respect their right to be consulted on the development of policies which have a direct impact on them must be guaranteed,

- To recognize the significant economic contribution of the tobacco crop to the economies of tobacco-growing countries to be recognized, and

- A comprehensive economic study on the market must be conducted and taken into account when proposing measures.

International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) is a non-profit entity that promotes the cause of millions of tobacco growers around the world.  ITGA advocates for the inclusion of tobacco growers in global discussions, trying to provide them with a strong collective voice in the international arena to ensure protection for them and their families.