SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE LIVELIHOOD TO TOBACCO GROWING.
The World ‘No Tobacco Day’ will be celebrated on 31st of May 2023. This is an annual event meant to create awareness on the dangers of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.?The theme for this year’s celebration ‘We Need Food, Not Tobacco’ partly highlights the plight of tobacco farmers.
Tobacco farmers, mostly women and children, are exposed to a myriad of social, economic and health problems which arise from the production and processing of tobacco. They are likely to suffer from green tobacco sickness (absorption of nicotine through the skin while harvesting wet tobacco leaves), pesticide intoxication, respiratory diseases, and cancer. Despite tobacco farming being labour and capital intensive, tobacco farmers receive peanuts compared to the final price obtained upon value addition. Tobacco companies recover loans and cost of highly priced inputs extended to farmers from these meagre earnings thus making it difficult for the farmers to break the poverty cycle and the dependency syndrome entrenched by the tobacco industry. Farmers are therefore not able to meet their daily needs, take their children to school and even meet treatment expenses for the chronic diseases resulting from tobacco farming. They also have to contend with the impact of tobacco farming on the environment. Clearing of vegetation to grow tobacco and obtain firewood to cure tobacco leaves, result to desertification, soil erosion, depletion of carbon sinks and loss of biodiversity.?The use of fertilizers and pesticides in tobacco farming is responsible for soil degradation leading to poor yields and contamination of water, making it unsafe for domestic consumption.
The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) which provide for policy measures on reduction of demand and supply for tobacco, ‘recognizes the need to promote economically viable alternatives to tobacco production as a way to prevent possible adverse social and economic impacts on populations whose livelihoods depend on tobacco production…….[As well as] to have due regard to the protection of the environment and the health of persons in respect of tobacco cultivation and manufacture.’(Policy Options and Recommendations: Ar. 17 & 18 WHO FCTC). To address the social, economic and environmental issues identified above, tobacco farmers can with the support of the government and other stakeholders venture into agricultural activities which are environmental friendly, beneficial to health, profitable and less labour intensive.
A case in point is the Tobacco-Free Farms initiative at Migori County, Kenya championed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO). These international organizations are in conjunction with Kenyan authorities helping tobacco farmers to switch from tobacco farming to alternative food crops such as beans, which take shorter period to mature and are easier to harvest. ?The World food Programme (WFP) provided agricultural extension services and a ready market for the farm produce. The farmers are now able to get more income from bean farming compared to what they got from tobacco, witnessed improved school attendance of children who were involved in tobacco farming and above all deriving health benefits from beans, which are a source of iron necessary for the well-being of children and pregnant women (UN, 2022).
However, despite the successes achieved by farmers abandoning tobacco for alternative viable farming, challenges among them; access to agricultural extension services, affordable credit, markets for farm produce, lack of value addition, import of cheap farm produce, and exploitation by middlemen (Clark. M, et al, 2020) are impeding full transition to viable crop production. Addressing these challenges will enable farmers to enjoy full benefits of embracing economically viable and sustainable alternatives to tobacco growing.