Tobacco industry urged to help poor farmers with real support

An anti-tobacco group has called on tobacco industry to end “rhetoric” on World Food Day and provide real support to poor tobacco farmers.

PROGGA – knowledge for progress – joined public health and workers’ rights groups globally in calling on the tobacco industry to end its exploitation of tobacco farmers on Wednesday, a day before World Food Day.

It also urged the government to support farmers who want to quit growing tobacco and to help address their food security concerns.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, tobacco-producing land and its production have doubled in four years.

The lure of short-term profits from raising tobacco often causes farmers to abandon the farming of traditional staple crops that feed and nourish people.

A tobacco industry front group – International Tobacco Growers’ Association (ITGA) – is campaigning for the tobacco industry’s contribution in food security marking the food day.

PROGGA said ITGA’s main supporters were international cigarette and tobacco leaf companies, including Alliance One International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco International, Japan Tobacco International, Philip Morris International and Universal Leaf.

“Tobacco companies fund and direct ITGA to influence policy makers and block life saving tobacco control measures,” it said in a statement.

The anti-tobacco group said historically tobacco industry had exploited farmers in Bangladesh and around the world by encouraging them to cultivate tobacco leaves and then intentionally keeping prices too low to be profitable.

“These low prices, as well as unfair contracts that make farmers pay inflated prices for inputs, undermine farmers’ bargaining power, causing them to fall into a cycle of debt that perpetuates poverty.”

Tobacco is being cultivated in more than 20 districts in Bangladesh.

It kills more than 57,000 people a year in Bangladesh, leaving hundreds of thousands to suffer from diseases like cancer.

Its cultivation also undermines the health and wellness of farmers, who experience illness from exposure to pesticides and nicotine.

Tobacco farmers’ cumulative seasonal exposure to nicotine absorbed through the skin is equivalent to smoking at least 180 cigarettes.

“Though the tobacco industry claims to have the best interest of Bangladesh’s farmers in mind, the reality is that the tobacco industry values only its own profits – often at the expense of our farmers,” said PROGGA.

“Bangladesh’s tobacco farmers often live in extreme poverty, bound to the potentially deadly life of tobacco farming, without viable alternatives.”

The group called for implementation of the tobacco control law that calls to support the tobacco farmers who want to quit.

Public health specialists also made the call at the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which is meeting in Moscow to discuss development and implementation of the Convention.

Bangladesh has also ratified the WHO FCTC.

It obligates countries to implement proven methods to reduce tobacco use, including smoke-free public places, large pictorial warning labels on tobacco products, increased tobacco taxes and bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

In addition to these life-saving measures, the treaty calls on countries to work with tobacco farmers to find suitable alternative livelihoods and to help them transition from exploitative tobacco farming.