Wed 31-05-2023 22:54 PM

World No Tobacco Day 2023: Grow food, not tobacco: WHO

GENEVA, 31st May, 2023 (WAM) -- On 31st May 2023, WHO and public health champions around the world came together to celebrate World No Tobacco Day (WNTD). This year’s theme is “Grow food, not tobacco”. The 2023 global campaign aims to raise awareness about alternative crop production and marketing opportunities for tobacco farmers and encourage them to grow sustainable, nutritious crops.

It also aims to expose the tobacco industry’s efforts to interfere with attempts to substitute tobacco growing with sustainable crops, thereby contributing to the global food crisis.

The growing food crisis is driven by conflicts and wars, climatic shocks, and the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Structural causes like the choice of crop also have an impact, and a look into tobacco growing reveals how it contributes to increased food insecurity:

Across the globe around 3.5 million hectares of land are converted for tobacco growing each year. Growing tobacco also contributes to deforestation of 200 000 hectares a year.
Tobacco growing is resource intensive and requires heavy use of pesticides and fertilisers, which contribute to soil degradation.
Land used for growing tobacco then has a lower capacity for growing other crops, such as food, since tobacco depletes soil fertility.
Compared with other agricultural activities such as maize growing and even livestock grazing, tobacco farming has a far more destructive impact on ecosystems as tobacco farmlands are more prone to desertification.

Any profits to be gained from tobacco as a cash crop may not offset the damage done to sustainable food production in low- and middle-income countries. Against this background, there is an urgent need to take legal measures to reduce tobacco growing and help farmers to move into the production of alternative food crops.

The 2023 WNTD campaign calls on governments and policy-makers to step up legislation, develop suitable policies and strategies, and enable market conditions for tobacco farmers to shift to growing food crops that would provide them and their families with a better life. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control offers specific principles and policy options on the promotion of economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers and individual sellers (outlined in Article 17), and on enhancing protection of the environment and the health of people (Article 18). The implementation of these provisions should be strengthened in countries.

Tariq Al Fahaam/ Amjad Saleh