The Future of Tobacco Growing

By International Tobacco Growers’ Association

During 2019, the production of tobacco leaf has, once again, decreased. It serves to highlight the necessity of tobacco growers to come together and join efforts to safeguard their livelihoods. Tobacco growers produce a legal crop with a legal demand and do it to earn income for their families, generating foreign-exchange revenue and economic development for their countries.

The Framework Convention for Tobacco Control’s (FCTC) eighth Conference of the Parties (COP8), by the World Health Organization (WHO), once again accused tobacco growing of having a negative impact on the environment, bundling together, incorrectly, the impact of the industrial side of the sector with the agricultural side. Tobacco growers have no responsibility for the impact of the tobacco products industry. Tobacco growers are only accountable for the impacts directly derived from the cultivation of tobacco leaf and, even then, it has to become clear what comes from their own actions and what is a consequence of the buying policies of their clients.

As is often the case, in “Cigarette Smoking: An Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across its Entire Supply Chain”, a publication by WHO, the authors state the overall impact of the sector in 2014, not separating tobacco growing from the other impacts. The reality is:

• A total of 32.4 million tons of green tobacco were cultivated.

• Cultivation occupied 4 million hectares of land

• Produced a total of 6.48 million tons of dry tobacco

• Manufactured into 6 trillion cigarettes

• Which contributed to 84 million tons of CO2 (0.2% of the total global emissions)

• Over 22 billion cubic meters of water

• Over 21 million tons of oil

Before being brought to the auction or contract floors, where the leaf is sold, tobacco growers need to first cure tobacco leaves. There are several methods to cure tobacco: flue-curing, sun-curing, air-curing, and fire-curing. Only the process of fire-curing requires wood to be burned. Flue-curing, the most used method, requires heating a barn to cure the leaves, but the source of the heat does not necessarily need to be wood. The adoption and introduction of modern barns with modern heating equipment significantly reduced the demand for wood, therefore mitigating the problem of deforestation. WHO’s “Cigarette Smoking: An Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across its Entire Supply Chain” estimated that 8.05 million tons of wood were used for flue-curing during 2014, with nearly 7.8 tons of wood required for a ton of tobacco to be produced.

Coresta’s Guide number 17 (April 2016), by the Task Force Sustainability in Tobacco Leaf, reiterates the measures that tobacco growers have been introducing to address the problem of deforestation.

• Adapting barns to the size of the crop produced

• Improving insulation to minimize heat loss

• Installing furnaces that evenly distribute the heat

• Installing controls for relative humidity to prevent fuel wastage while optimizing  quality and yield

Introducing these practices does not come without cost. Tobacco production was moved from high-income countries (HIC) to lower- and middle-income countries (LMIC) by the main buyers, to reduce the cost of tobacco in tobacco products. Because of that, tobacco growing started being associated with problems inherent to developing countries. It is not possible to dissociate the environmental impacts of the regional challenges that those countries face. It is obvious that keeping children away from the fields or in school in a country where kindergartens are common, schools are close to the areas where growers live or have good transport means, is not the same as in a country where there is nothing of that sort.

On the other hand, those problems also arise from the fact that during the last 20 years the prices paid to growers have remained stagnant while the cost of production has exponentially increased. In many countries, the price paid to growers is barely above or even below the cost of production. In such conditions,  growers do not have the option of using coal or gas to cure, they can only pay for wood from felled trees, offered to them at much lower prices. In many cases, they cannot afford to hire additional labor at critical phases of the crop, like harvesting, for the same reason. Ensuring growers receive better pay for their work is key to decreasing deforestation and minimizing tobacco’s environmental footprint.

Regarding agrochemical use, tobacco growers are excluded from using the most harmful chemicals. Tobacco companies and leaf dealers are subject to very strict rules regarding the contents of the cigarettes and will not buy tobacco-containing those chemicals. Therefore, tobacco growers are objectively avoiding the use of dangerous chemicals and using those products would be against their best interests.

And, as Table 1 shows, tobacco is not part of the crops that are more water-intensive, being instead in the group of the crops with the lowest water requirement levels. The crops that require the most water are, for example, sugarcane and cotton. One is the feedstock of the textile industry while the other is being attacked for its health impacts.

 Tobacco growers do their utmost to grow their crop sustainably and several tobacco growers’ associations are already implementing social programs addressing, for example, child labor (inherent to many other crops and economic activities throughout Africa, Asia, and America), by building daycare centers, schools, and providing the children with activities to develop their talents and learn.

The demand for tobacco leaf will not disappear abruptly, tobacco will withstand for a long time and tobacco use will never entirely disappear. Ever-increasing changes in the way consumers use tobacco/nicotine products are putting more responsibility on tobacco growers to adapt their production into something worthy of the third decade of the 21st century. However, when considering the approach to tobacco, the words on Brazilian tobacco by Dr. Terry Mabbett must not be forgotten. Dr. Mabbett highlighted that it is impossible to “find alternative crops to tobacco on small farms while maintaining anywhere near the same level of income generation”. Dr. Mabbett asserted that despite tobacco, on average, accounting for just 16% of the farm’s area, it generated 56% of the revenue. Reflecting on these statistics it is safe to say tobacco growing is not going anywhere and will continue to be produced.

The International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA), the only worldwide association of tobacco growers, has worked for almost four decades to improve the conditions of tobacco growers all over the world.

The agronomic conditions of tobacco growing can be better done by implementing good agricultural practices (GAP). Promoting the benefits of GAP can help the quest for more sustainable agriculture techniques. GAP hold the ability to increase the income of tobacco growers by using procedures that allow for a more wholesome agriculture strategy. The adoption of measures such as soil preparation, water management, crop rotation, the use of protective equipment, among others, holds the potential to prevent farmers and laborers from being sick and may avoid lower prices or market loss due to decreased quality of products, thus limiting deforestation or the use of child labor.

It must be clear that only organizations involved in the legal tobacco market will work to improve the environment. It is of vital importance to control the illicit tobacco trade as those rules do not apply to those entities. Supporting the attempts by the legal tobacco sector to improve on their weaknesses and its commitment to continue to do so benefits both governments and citizens.

However, the additional efforts and commitment by tobacco growers must not go unrecognized. The sector needs to value the implementation of GAP. The prices offered to tobacco growers need to reflect the higher quality of the production and the earnings must reach the hands of those whose daily efforts make it possible.