GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) and other public health promoters are celebrating World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) on May 31 with this year’s theme ‘We need food, not tobacco’, aiming to sensitise tobacco farmers about alternative crop production and marketing opportunities and encourage them to grow sustainable, nutritious crops.
The 2023 global campaign will also aim to expose the tobacco industry’s attempts to hinder efforts being made to replace tobacco cultivation with sustainable crops, thus contributing to the global food crisis.
Though conflicts and wars, climatic shocks, and the Covid-related economic and social impacts are mainly blamed for the growing food crisis, structural causes like the crop choice also contribute to increased food insecurity.
Data shows that around 3.5 million hectares of land are converted for tobacco growing each year, a major factor in deforestation of 200,000 hectares annually.
Moreover, the campaigners argue that as cultivation of tobacco requires heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers, it causes soil degradation and affects its fertility, thus lowering the used land’s capacity to grow other crops.
They say tobacco farming has a far more destructive impact on ecosystems compared with other agricultural activities such as maize growing and even livestock grazing, rendering tobacco farmlands more prone to desertification. This damage to sustainable food production in low- and middle-income countries may not be compensated by any profits to be gained from tobacco as a cash crop, they add.
Against this background, there is an urgent need to take legal measures to reduce tobacco growing and help farmers to shift to alternative food crops cultivation.
The campaigners also refute the tobacco industry claim that it was providing livelihood to the tobacco farmers, juxtaposing it with the health hazards these growers and their families are exposed to while handling insecticides and toxic chemicals during the cultivation of tobacco.
They also point out ‘unfair’ contractual arrangements the industry makes with the farmers, keeping them impoverished, and the child labour often used for tobacco cultivation, depriving the children of the right to education in violation of human rights.
As nine of the 10 largest tobacco cultivators are low- and middle-income countries, and four of these are categorised as low-income food-deficit countries, so more efficient use of the land under tobacco cultivation can help them achieve ‘Zero-hunger’ which is United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2, the campaigners assert.
The 2023 WNTD campaign urges governments and policymakers to enact laws, develop suitable policies and strategies, and create conducive market conditions for tobacco farmers so they could switch over to food crops cultivation to ensure better life for their families. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control suggests policy options on the promotion of economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers and individual sellers (outlined in Article 17), and on enhancing environment protection and the health of people (Article 18). The campaigners strive for strengthening implementation of these provisions in the countries concerned.
