Mechanization of cigarette manufacturing in the s helped grow the market for cigarettes dramatically, increasing demand for tobacco leaf. While widespread cultivation of tobacco leaf has generated many challenges— including health hazards for farmers, environmental degradation and child labor issues—the most pressing systemic public health challenge is how the industry often uses tobacco farming to undermine tobacco control, arguing that tobacco control destroys the livelihoods of smallholder tobacco farmers.
Recent research across major tobacco-growing countries demonstrates that farming tobacco is not prosperous for most smallholder farmers. Many farmers—including many with contracts with oligopolistic leaf-buying companies—pay too much for inputs e. The opportunity costs of farming tobacco are high, with farmers missing out on human capital development and more lucrative economic opportunities. So why do tobacco farmers grow tobacco? Many farmers report an assured market, even if prices are consistently low.
Others report difficulty obtaining credit for other economic activities. For some, it is a way to generate cash in low-cash economies to pay for necessities like education and health care. Yet, the research demonstrates consistently that many tobacco farmers underestimate their costs and overestimate their returns. Few governments have made such efforts. There is no panacea for this transition; some countries have tried small programs to introduce new crops—e.
Some farmers switch to and from tobacco, based on hopes for high leaf prices. The most successful larger-scale examples of change rely more on existing skills and experience. In Indonesia, former tobacco farmers are growing non-tobacco crops that they have always grown, and are making more money doing so.
Governments can help by investing in supply and value chains, finding new markets for these other products, and divesting from any participation in tobacco cultivation. Philip Morris International PMI published a report in April , focusing on the empowerment of women for change in its supply chain. A study conducted in China, Tanzania and Kenya concluded that few women farmers had any financial decision-making power, with men owning the titles for the lands and receiving the most revenue for the collective hours of labour.
Respondents commonly reported being treated unfairly by tobacco companies. Moreover, women face particular harmful effects to their health while working on tobacco farms, including risks of miscarriages while pregnant. All four transnational tobacco corporations have a strong narrative around tobacco farming supporting the case that this activity would increase livelihoods, strengthen communities, provide financially stable futures for farmers, and good working conditions.
The COVID pandemic has worsened the struggle of farmers to find fair prices for their tobacco bales on the auction floors, as well as the health risks of tobacco farming. In Malawi, farmers have reported receiving less than half of the expected rate for their tobacco leaf at auction.
Tobacco leaf production has many environmental and health risks, which are frequently underreported by the tobacco industry. Minimizing the health and environmental impacts of tobacco growing is yet another tactic of the tobacco industry. Children are more vulnerable to green tobacco sickness given their proportionally lower body mass to nicotine absorption. Understanding and addressing these factors may increase the successful uptake of alternative livelihoods to tobacco.
Furthermore, this study demonstrates that a one-size fits all alternative livelihood intervention is less likely to be effective as each district has unique features affecting farmers' decisions on growing tobacco. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of premature death and morbidity, with approximately 8 million people dying annually and millions more suffering from tobacco-attributable diseases.
In part, the challenge of tobacco supply stems from the continued demand for tobacco products. Almost 6 trillion cigarettes continue to be consumed each year. Sub-Saharan Africa is a major and increasingly important producer of tobacco leaf for the global market. Despite the mounting evidence of the economic struggle of smallholder farmers that grow tobacco, little is known about the factors that shape these farmers' agro-economic decisions. Tobacco farmers' situations are relevant to policy not least because Article 17 of the WHO FCTC requires tobacco-growing countries to promote economically viable alternatives.
The aim of this study is to understand the reasons why farmers grow tobacco and identify the factors associated with this decision across three major tobacco growing countries: Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia.
Tobacco production is influenced by many factors. To begin to understand household-level decisions it is important to provide a brief overview of these factors. The economies of many tobacco-growing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are heavily reliant on agriculture. Historically, promotion of cash crop production, such as tobacco, was aimed at improving economic growth through foreign exchange generation and increasing farm incomes and household food security by providing cash from crop sales to purchase grain staples.
Smallholder tobacco farmers, unlike many nonfarm households, are responsible for both the allocation of inputs including labor for agricultural production and the allocation of their income in consuming both agricultural and nonagricultural goods and services.
A tobacco-producing household may allocate their capital and labor inputs to both tobacco cultivation and cultivation of staple food for household consumption. Alternatively, some farmers may principally seek to maximize profits, allocating most of their resources to tobacco production and then using their profits to buy food and nonagricultural commodities and services.
Recent research demonstrates that the revenues from selling tobacco leaf barely cover or even frequently outstrip farmers' physical input costs eg, fertilizer, seeds or seedlings, agricultural chemicals. The exclusion of this cost gives farmers a perception that overstates the profitability of growing tobacco. This narrative of profitability is amplified and exaggerated by the tobacco leaf buyers.
There are at least four main categories of factors that influence farmers' crop choice—environmental, farm and household including demographic , economic, and institutional. Environmental factors include land characteristics, type of soil, weather seasons, and closeness to water sources, roads, and urban cities.
Farm and household characteristics include household size, educational level, gender, farm equipment, land size, and food security. For example, he found that all the sampled households that farmed tobacco were male-headed households. Results from Udry 27 suggest that plots controlled by women are farmed less intensively. Economic factors include crop prices, input and transportation costs, cash crop promotion programs, farm size, debt, availability of credit, and access to markets.
Institutional factors include input subsidy programs and availability of extension officers. A study in Southern Niassa Province in Mozambique examined cash crop cultivation, such as cotton, tobacco, sunflower, and lemon grass, and found that although farmers preferred producing staple food crops over cash crops, they tended to cultivate cash crops that helped them access inputs and extension services, and which had a ready market for selling.
Certainly, the availability of credit and inputs influence farmers' crop choice. This study employs an analysis of primary survey data collected from smallholder tobacco farming household heads in Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia in the — farming season.
The survey methods have been described in a previous study, 14 but, briefly, a stratified random sampling method was adopted to collect survey data in major tobacco-farming districts with high concentrations of smallholder farmers. A survey method was chosen for this study as it allowed us to obtain both quantitative and qualitative information from individual perspectives in a large, representative population sample of tobacco farmers.
The data analysis utilized both descriptive and logistical regression methods. Histograms and a chromatic circle are used to present descriptive analysis of the reasons why farmers started and are currently growing tobacco.
The reasons provided were grouped under nine categories: 1 existence of ready market, 2 it is the only viable crop, 3 accustomed to growing, 4 availability of land, 5 influenced by other tobacco producers, 6 good incentives from the tobacco companies, 7 highly lucrative crop, 7 to repay outstanding debts, and 8 other. We anticipated that the underlying construct for some of these options may overlap eg, only viable crop and highly lucrative , therefore detailed explanations for each was provided to respondents to ensure they understood the differences Supplementary Table 3.
The variables were also validated with local partners during the survey development stage to ensure differentiation between constructs. Because the dependent variable is categorical and nominal, multinomial logistic regression is utilized. Country differences on perceived reasons for tobacco growing, human capital, and different constraint variables do exist and are controlled for, using Malawi as the comparison base group. Several key household and farm characteristics are included in the model based on the literature discussed above.
Age, years of education, household size, total land size available to the farmer, and the fraction of total land assigned to tobacco farming in acres are continuous variables, where coefficients represent the estimated average effect of a one unit increase of each variable on the probability of selecting a specific reason.
Gender, contract status, outstanding debt, and food security are dichotomous variables, where model coefficients represent the estimated average effect of having such characteristics on the probability of selecting a specific reason. Stata V. Household characteristics are presented in Table 1 , revealing some clear distinctions across countries. For instance, from the current study, Malawi has the lowest proportion of female headed-households. Kenyan farmers have the smallest cultivatable land size 2.
In general, a very small proportion of cultivatable land is rented by farmers in this sample. Kenya has the highest proportion of the arable land that is utilized for tobacco growing. The majority of tobacco farmers in all districts started growing tobacco because they believed it was the only economically viable crop. However, some districts had a larger proportion of farmers choosing certain reasons than others Supplementary Figure 1.
For example, we found that there was a larger number of farmers who started growing tobacco because of the ready market in the Rumphi and Kasungu districts compared with the other districts. The most often cited reason for initiating tobacco cultivation for all counties was the belief that tobacco was the only economically viable cash crop. Compared with other counties, a large percentage of participants in Migori further reported the presence of a ready market.
In addition, more participants in Migori and Meru compared with Bungoma and Busia stated that other tobacco farmers influenced them to start tobacco cultivation. A greater percentage of farmers in Chipata and Kapiri Mposhi districts started cultivating tobacco because they believed that it was highly lucrative. On the other hand, a greater percentage of participants in Choma, Kalomo, and Serenje started cultivating tobacco because they believed it was the only economically viable crop.
As shown in Supplementary Figure 3 , a large percentage of people in Lundazi started cultivating tobacco because they were influenced by other tobacco farmers. The perception of crop viability was the most common factor reported by participants Table 2. The perception of a ready market was consistently the second most chosen reason for growing tobacco across the three countries.
Very few farmers are cultivating tobacco because of incentives from the tobacco industry with almost no farmers from Malawi indicating that they were cultivating tobacco for this reason Table 2.
We also compared the reasons why farmers started tobacco farming to the reasons why they are currently growing tobacco. The chromatic circle in Figure 1 shows the number of farmers who changed reasons for growing tobacco the chromatic circle includes only categories that had more than 20 farmers reporting different reasons. The reasons provided for currently growing tobacco than for why they began were generally different.
For farmers who started growing tobacco because it had a ready market the assurance of an already existing market irrespective of making profits or not , almost half are currently growing tobacco because they identify it as the only economically viable crop thus tobacco being the only crop that farmers can grow and recoup costs for farming. Statistically significant factors that influence the farmers' choices to continue growing tobacco include 1 educational level of the household head, 2 size of land allocated to growing tobacco, 3 outstanding debts, and 4 age of household head Table 3.
The level of education of participants appears to contribute to farmers decisions: for every 1-year increase in educational attainment there is a 0. However, a 1-year increase in education decreases the probability of a farmer currently growing tobacco by 0. The null hypothesis was rejected for all independent variables except land cultivated.
Each additional member of the household increases the probability of farmers currently cultivating tobacco because it is the only economically viable cash crop by 0.
As with household size, a one-acre increase in land allocated to tobacco increases the probability that a farmer is currently growing tobacco because they believe it is the only economically viable cash crop but decreases the probability of it being due to a ready market. On the other hand, an increase in indebtedness is more likely to make a farmer more dependent on tobacco growing, perceiving that it is the only crop that can get them out of debt.
Farmers in Kenya and Zambia have a lower probability of currently growing tobacco because they perceive it as the only economically viable crop compared with Malawi. Similarly, they have a higher probability of growing tobacco because they are accustomed to growing the crop. Farmers in Zambia have a 0. Being a contract farmer and the gender of the household head had no statistically significant influence on the reasons why a farmer is currently growing tobacco.
Though we found some differences among and within countries, the most consistent and strongest findings are the importance of perceived economic viability of the crop and access to markets. Not surprisingly, many farmers identify market access as a key factor in their decision making. For instance, in Malawi a higher percentage of farmers in the Rumphi and Kasungu districts started growing tobacco because of the existence of a well-structured market for tobacco, which is not present for other crops.
The importance of the existence of a well organized market in Malawi corresponds with Altman et al. Similar results were found in Indonesia and Philippines where tobacco farmers expressed that they continued to grow tobacco because of the lack of an existing well-structured market for other crops amongst other things.
Studies conducted in China, Kenya, and Brazil found that interventions to stimulate alternative livelihoods were more successful in improving farmers income from alternative crops when market channels were clearly identified and robustly developed.
Apart from market access, farmers' perception of the crop's economic viability frames farmers' decisions. These results point to the perceived lack of economically viable alternatives irrespective of the reasons why the farmer started growing tobacco in the first place, coupled with the initial perception that tobacco growing is a lucrative endeavor.
Furthermore, results from the statistical analysis suggest that more educated farmers were more likely to cultivate tobacco because of the existence of ready market or it being the only economically viable crop and not because it is highly lucrative.
Previous research in Malawi has also shown that educated farmers are more likely to farm under contracts, hence have a predetermined buyer for their crops. Agro-ecological conditions also appear to contribute to notions of viability of the crop. It seems that the overall growing conditions for all crops are less favorable in these districts—for example, low rainfall and poor soil conditions—and farmers perceive that they have limited economically viable competitive alternatives to tobacco farming.
It is worth noting that in many districts of these countries, farmers have noted that they had the most interaction with agricultural extension services from the tobacco leaf companies and diminishing or even no services from the government providing guidance on other crops.
Recent research demonstrates that other crops are economically viable in these countries, 41 , 42 but this information is not reaching many farmers, and perhaps if it were, the perceptions of viability might shift significantly. These results suggest that most smallholder farmers are growing tobacco not because it is profitable or because of a ready market but because they now believe there is no economically viable alternative.
Many of these smallholder farmers have gained years of experience in tobacco farming and may perceive it to be risky or uncertain to shift to another crop, perhaps especially if they have lower educational levels. This is consistent with results found by Beach et al. In addition, farmers who indicated the need for additional skills to cultivate other crops were more likely to allocate more land to tobacco cultivation. The factors that contribute to farmers' perception of viability also require further exploration.
Supply chains are both dynamic, in that they shift based on a number of political and economic factors, and stable, in that historical patterns of agricultural production of certain crops can make them difficult to change. It is important to note that economic viability did not necessarily correspond to farmers' perceptions of tobacco as a lucrative crop.
In Zambia, a larger percentage of farmers in Chipata and Kapiri Mposhi compared woth the other districts reported that they farmed tobacco because they believed that it was highly lucrative.
Farmers in Chipata typically have more fertile land than those in other districts and can produce higher quality tobacco leaf higher grade which commands a better price. Somewhat similarly, Kapiri Mposhi is situated where three trade routes meet, making it easier for farmers to transport their tobacco in any direction where better prices exist.
The lesson for governments in terms of promoting alternative crops is to develop and continue to invest in comparable dynamic markets for other agricultural goods. In Kenya, a larger number of participants in Meru county stated that they started growing tobacco because tobacco companies provided them with incentives.
Meru county has fertile land and higher agricultural productivity compared to many other districts and farmers can cultivate other profitable crops.
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