'30 mn tobacco growers will be hit by alternate crop farming'

As South Asian countries including India have proposed an alternate crop farming for tobacco farmers, the President of International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA), Daniel Green, on Friday termed the move aggressive, saying the decision will affect the livelihood of 30 million tobacco growers across the world.

Daniel Green -- an American tobacco grower -- said that such a decision without involving the tobacco farmers in the discussions can leave a massive dent on their revenue generation and the livelihood of the farmers and their families.

"Unfortunately this is an issue which is very complicated. Tobacco farmers are not the same in every region of the world, there are different regions and in different regions different crops need to be examined so that it works. We are not even aware of which specific crop they are proposing," Green told IANS in an interview.

He said that there were a lot of tobacco farmers who were producing a lot of other crops as well and they better knew what works and what doesn't, which makes it mandatory for the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) to include tobacco farmers in policy making instead of keeping them out of the entire discussion.

ITGA is the world's biggest association of tobacco growers.

The tobacco farmers have been banned from participating at the ongoing World Health Organisation - Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), world's biggest convention on tobacco control. The six-day long conference was inaugurated by Health Minister J.P. Nadda and Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena on Nov 7, and is being attended by 1,500 delegation from 185 countries.

India along with other South Asian Countries proposed the alternate crop system for tobacco growers in the region on Thursday. If it is supported by all the member nations of the convention then it will become mandatory for the governments to seek alternate crop for tobacco growers.

Speaking further on the issue, Green said : "In recent years on the side of the FCTC there has not been any research on alternate crop farming for tobacco farming. Even there has not been any research on the funding issue of the research, then how can they propose what is good or bad for tobacco farmers."

Calling the entire move a huge jolt for tobacco growers across the world, Green also said that so far there has been no other crop to generate revenue like the way tobacco does.

"A lot of small farmers cultivate this on a very small plot of land and make their family survive. In such situations if the farmers are asked to grow something else on the same land how will they survive and generate the same amount of revenue, which till now was enough for their family, even if the plot of land was small," said Green, adding that globally, at least 30 million farmers and their families will get affected if the decision for alternate crops farming is implemented.

"We have been writing to the FCTC Secretariat for years to let us participate and also invite them to visit our farms and know what tobacco farmers are all about and understand their hardship. Instead of initiating a civil dialogue and understanding the problems about the issue, they are calling us criminals," added Green.

The ITGA also expressed its outrage over the recent comments made by the head of FCTC Secretariat Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, where she in the first media briefing of the convention called the tobacco farmers "manipulative and bribe payers to get their demands fulfilled".

Countering the allegations, Green said: "We have repeatedly been denied our right to be heard since the creation of the FCTC nearly 15 years ago. We acknowledge the well-known harmful effects of tobacco use and understand the need for tobacco regulation, but such regulation should be rational and science-based."

"Instead, we see extreme, emotionally driven proposals that only result in missed opportunities to protect public health and fail to provide alternative economic opportunities to tobacco-dependent farm families and their communities," said Green.

(Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at Rupesh.d@ians.in )

--IANS

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