WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY 2023 “Grow food, not tobacco”| Tabaccologia

On May 31, 2023, the World Health Organization and public health organizations around the world celebrate World No Tobacco Day (WNTD). This year’s theme is “Grow food, not tobacco” [1]. The Global 2023 campaign aims to raise awareness among tobacco growers about the opportunities to produce and market alternative crops and encourage them to grow sustainable and nutritious crops. It also aims to denounce acts of interference by the tobacco industry to hinder the replacement of tobacco crops with sustainable crops.

Tobacco cultivation and production

Tobacco cultivation and production exacerbates food insecurity, and the tobacco industry contributes to the global food crisis.

The growing food crisis is driven by conflicts and wars, climate change and the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by structural causes, such as the choice of agricultural crops. Tobacco cultivation contributes greatly to increasing food insecurity because:

1. Around the world, around 3.5 million hectares of land are converted from food crops to tobacco cultivation every year.
2. Two hundred thousand hectares per year are deforested for tobacco cultivation.
3. Pesticides and fertilizers, which contribute to soil degradation, are used massively for tobacco cultivation.
4. Land once used for growing tobacco has a lower capacity to grow other crops, such as food crops, because tobacco impoverishes soil fertility.
5. Compared to other agricultural activities, such as maize cultivation and even cattle grazing, tobacco cultivation has a much more destructive impact on ecosystems, as tobacco soils are more prone to desertification.
6. Any profits from tobacco as a cash crop may not offset the damage caused to sustainable food production in low- and middle-income countries.

In this context, it is urgent to take legal measures to reduce tobacco cultivation and help farmers switch to the production of alternative food crops.

Supporting the creation of alternative livelihoods

The tobacco industry often presents itself as a champion of the livelihood of tobacco farmers, which is far from reality. Intensive handling of insecticides and toxic chemicals during tobacco cultivation causes suffering and illness for farmers and their families. Unfair contractual arrangements with tobacco companies keep farmers impoverished, and child labour, which is often intertwined with tobacco cultivation, interferes with the right to education and constitutes a violation of human rights.

Nine of the 10 largest tobacco growers are low- and middle-income countries, and 4 of these are defined as low-income food-deficit countries. Land used for growing tobacco could be used more efficiently to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2: “zero hunger”.

The WNTD 2023 campaign calls on governments and policymakers to strengthen legislation, develop appropriate policies and strategies, and create market conditions that allow tobacco growers to switch to food crops that provide them and their families with a better life. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control offers specific principles and policy options on promoting economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers, and individual sellers (described in Article 17) and on improving the protection of the environment and human health (Article 18). The implementation of these provisions should be strengthened in all countries.

Deepening the concepts

We are in a period of crisis: economic, social, financial, today particularly linked to the consequences of the war in Ukraine that broke out a year ago (February 24, 2022) with an ongoing pandemic, which has marked a health emergency of global proportions in the last three years. The increase in raw materials, the cost of fossil fuels, the crisis of cereals imported from Eastern Europe, have led to a greater need for self-subsistence in terms of food production, which has also put in crisis the land use policy that years ago (EEC Reg. 1272/88) introduced in Europe the mandatory set-aside: the obligation to set aside the fields leaving them unproductive. Obligation abolished a short time ago (2008, CAP Health Check) due to the trend of increasing prices (especially of cereals) for the lower productions obtained. How much more urgent and topical is this appeal today: we need food, as an alternative to crops destined for industrial transformations, such as tobacco; Even more so today, when attention to human health has risen to the top of the collective consciousness [2]; tobacco kills more than half of its users [3]. As many as 8 million deaths occur each year from tobacco smoking, making it the world’s largest cause of preventable death.

Even more so today, when the same consumer of traditional tobacco has turned to products recently entered the market, reducing the use of cigars and classic cigarettes, to move towards new generation products, such as electronic cigarettes, based on heating processes or the use of liquids for so-called vaporizers. Even more so today, after the surge in the price of pre-packaged cigarettes (2016) which recorded a collapse among young people. Even more so today, when the tobacco grower is faced with almost doubled expenses about the fuels necessary for the phases of arrangement, processing, cultivation and management up to the collection and first processing of tobacco.

Even more today, the search for sustainable and useful alternatives to the use of the land for agricultural purposes is ethically necessary: there is no longer talk of having to meet hedonistic requests, or now to be considered luxury, such as smoking tobacco; it is about returning to cultivating the land for food purposes: and the goal of Agenda 2030 “Zero hunger” is a categorical imperative for the prudent use of the Earth as a source of food and primary food resource, first of all.

Moreover, those easy profits that are promised to farmers have actually proved to be insolvent or unsatisfactory due to the unexpected increase in production costs and the simultaneous decline in global prices paid for tobacco. The areas devoted to tobacco are today about 5.3 million hectares of fertile soil [2]. Among these, 1.5 billion hectares have been deforested since 1970, contributing to an amount of 20% of the growth of greenhouse gases, for the cultivation of tobacco alone. The massive use of pesticides and synthetic chemicals in the various stages of cultivation, determines a pollution of the soils in which tobacco has been grown, lasting years, and confers sterility to the soil microbiome: this makes it necessary to face costs for its reclamation and the disposal of special waste, before being able to work those soils again. At a global level, tobacco production does not yet respond to the policy lines of environmental protection: the largest producer, China (producer of more than 40% of cigarettes in the world), does not provide sufficient environmental data in a transparent way to achieve the objectives of reducing environmental impacts [3]. Tobacco companies (British American Tobacco for example) have begun only now to set environmental targets in line with international protocols (Kyoto, Paris), aimed at reducing emissions by 30 % by 2025.

A smoker who consumes one pack a day (20 cigarettes) for 50 years, costs an equivalent of 5.1 tons of carbon dioxide to the environment, which, in order to be canceled, would require the planting of 132 trees each to grow for 10 years; 1,355 cubic meters of water, equivalent to the water required by 3 children to grow up to the age of 62; 1.3 tons of fossil fuel equivalent tons, non-renewable [3]. The costs are therefore disproportionate to the apparent “benefits” that nicotine (the drug contained in cigarettes) can give to a drug addict, which are then canceled by the same risks to the health of the smoker.

The first phase of the enormous environmental impact of cigar and cigarette production is that relating to tobacco growing. We are therefore looking for alternatives, as agronomists, as researchers, as politicians, to provide comparable alternatives in terms of income to tobacco cultivation, especially linked to national irrigated cereals, in crisis of quantity of self-produced; or to compensate farmers for loss of income, or for deferred profitability linked to different investments on their land. Researchers and institutions working in the agricultural sector are constantly looking for tools and policies that combine economic efficiency, social equity, and environmental sustainability [4]. We are looking for more sustainable crops in terms of ecological footprint, a methodology introduced and developed by Rees and Wackernagel [5] to assess the demand for natural resources (water in this case) of a production system, in which water resources are saved, to give eco-sustainable products, for an ethical choice, of lower profitability for the farmer. For the estimated worldwide production of 32.4 Mt of green tobacco leaves, 22,200 Mt of water resources are needed (2.5 times that required by the entire population of the UK for a year), in addition to 5.3 million hectares of fertile land, energy for 62.2 GJ and material resources for 27.2 Mt [3]. The waste from this production also concerns 55 Mt of wastewater, 84 Mt of CO2 equivalent and solid waste for 25 Mt. For all the reasons set out here, scholars [6] invoke the structural incompatibility of tobacco cultivation with the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. The increased awareness gained by today’s society, as well as a better monitoring system related to the environmental objectives related to tobacco production, should rather support efforts to reduce and replace tobacco use in global terms, as an important element of sustainable development [6]. We also try to research and experiment with methods of remediation of soils exploited by chemicals used in tobacco growing, and what alternative crops are possible in the following years, including research on their healthiness and food safety, considering the entire tobacco chain and the risks to men, women, children, and the environment [7,8].

Growing alternatives to tobacco are supported by the WHO FCTC Conference of Parties (Art 17 and 18), decision FCTC/COP6(11), Economically sustainable alternatives to tobacco growing [7].

References

1. World Health Organization (WHO). World No Tobacco Day 2023: grow food, not tobacco. 2023.
2. Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS). Fumo.Publisher Full Text
3. Action on smoking and health (ASH). Tobacco and the environment. 2021. Publisher Full Text
4. Blasi E, Franco S, Passeri N. La sostenibilità dei sistemi colturali europei: un approccio ecologico per la valutazione delle politiche agroambientali. Agriregionieuropa. 2014;39. Publisher Full Text
5. Rees WE, Wackernagel M. Investing in natural capital: the ecological economics approach to sustainability. Island Press: Washington; 1994.
6. Zafeiridou M, Hopkinson NS, Voulvoulis N. Cigarette smoking: an assessment of tobacco’s global environmental footprint across its entire supply chain. Environ Sci Technol. 2018; 52:8087-94. DOI
7. World Health Organization (WHO), Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FTCT). Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, sixth session. DECISION: economically sustainable alternatives to tobacco growing (in relation to Articles 17 and 18 of the WHO FCTC). 2014. Publisher Full Text
8. World Health Organization (WHO), Regional office for South-East Asia. 2014. Publisher Full Text