farming
7 Results
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News
Malawi: Legislative Malfeasance and a Meaningful Shift to Viable Alternatives to Tobacco Growing
Malawi remains the world’s most tobacco-dependent country, with more than 48% of the country’s export value generated from tobacco leaf production in 2019. Not surprisingly, tobacco control initiatives have been challenging to advance due to the dominant role that tobacco plays in the economy. It is also not surprising that Malawi remains one of the…
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Indonesian Farmers Better Off Growing Crops Other Than Tobacco: New Research
Tobacco control policies—such as increasing cigarette excise taxes—are often opposed by tobacco companies and their allies. In tobacco-growing countries, these entities argue that tobacco farming provides viable economic livelihoods and tobacco control policies would negatively affect the livelihoods of tobacco farming households. However, the argument that tobacco farming provides a viable economic livelihood is not…
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An Opportunity for Meaningful Public Health Progress: Zambia’s Pending Tobacco Control Legislation
In late November of 2019, Zambia’s finance minister, Bwalya Ng’andu, helped to officially inaugurate a new cigarette factory in the Multi Facility Economic Zone in the south of the nation’s capital, Lusaka. Mr. Ng’andu noted that it was the kind of investment that Zambia was seeking because it boosts revenue. Unfortunately, this viewpoint is incredibly…
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News
Why do farmers cultivate tobacco leaf? Evidence from Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is a major and increasingly important producer of tobacco leaf for the global market. In the last decade, there has been a marked shift in tobacco leaf production from high income countries to Africa. Both the size of the area under tobacco cultivation and amount of tobacco leaf produced have increased markedly in…
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News
Why Do Farmers Grow Tobacco? Evidence from Farmers in Indonesia and the Philippines
The supply of tobacco remains a pressing challenge to tobacco control. In the last two decades, there has been an increase in tobacco leaf production, especially in low- and middle-income countries where tobacco remains a popular and even dominant cash crop in some countries. This growth is happening despite a slow global decline in tobacco…
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The Tobacco Industry is Not an Economic Development Partner
Recently, murmurs in the development community have posited that mainly because of its strong supply chains and high profitability, a re-tooled tobacco industry might be a suitable development partner. A recent article by tobacco farming researchers across six countries systematically debunks this notion by demonstrating why the tobacco industry has proven to be a mostly…
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News
Countering the Narrative of Prosperity for Smallholder Tobacco Farmers: Evidence from Kenya
In recent years, there has been a systematic shift in tobacco farming to the world’s lower-Human Development Index (HDI) countries that tend to struggle economically and where governance is often weak. With little or no evidence, the tobacco industry pushes a loud narrative that tobacco control (e.g., tobacco taxation, smoke-free places, packaging/labeling provisions, marketing bans,…