Sunday, July 13, 2025
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
Ecobuild.club
  • Home
  • Sustainability
  • Insulation
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Eco Build
  • Green Energy
  • Natural Global Resources
  • Videos
No Result
View All Result
Ecobuild.club
Home Sustainability

Stop tobacco farming, grow food instead, says WHO

26th May 2023
in Sustainability
0
Stop tobacco farming, grow food instead, says WHO
0
SHARES
13
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Related posts

Media Advisory | UN Forum to boost momentum towards 2030

11th July 2025

Northern hemisphere heatwave underscores value of early-warning alerts

3rd July 2025

Ahead of World No Tobacco Day on Wednesday 31 May, WHO deplored that 3.2 million hectares of fertile land across 124 countries are being used to grow deadly tobacco – even in places where people are starving.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that governments across the world “spend millions supporting tobacco farms”, and that choosing to grow food instead of tobacco would allow the world to “prioritize health, preserve ecosystems, and strengthen food security for all”.

Disaster for food, environmental security

The agency’s new report, “Grow food, not tobacco”, recalls that a record 349 million people are facing acute food insecurity, many of them in some 30 countries on the African continent, where tobacco cultivation has increased by 15 per cent in the last decade.

According to WHO, nine of the 10 largest tobacco cultivators are low and middle-income countries. Tobacco farming compounds these countries’ food security challenges by taking up arable land. The environment and the communities which rely on it also suffer, as the crop’s expansion drives deforestation, contamination of water sources and soil degradation.

Vicious cycle of dependence

The report also exposes the tobacco industry for trapping farmers in a vicious cycle of dependence and exaggerating the economic benefits of tobacco as a cash crop.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Friday, Dr. Rüdiger Krech, WHO’s Director for Health Promotion, warned that tobacco’s economic importance is a “myth that we urgently need to dispel”.

He said that the crop contributes less than 1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in most tobacco-growing countries, and that the profits go to the world’s major cigarette-makers, while farmers struggle under the burden of debt contracted with the tobacco companies.

‘Smokers, think twice’

Dr. Krech also explained that tobacco farmers find themselves exposed to nicotine poisoning and dangerous pesticides. The broader impact on communities and whole societies is devastating, as some 1.3 million child labourers are estimated to be working on tobacco farms instead of going to school, he said.

“The message to smokers is, think twice”, Dr. Krech said, as consuming tobacco came down to supporting an iniquitous situation in which farmers and their families were suffering.

Workers at a tobacco factory in Malawi fill processing machinery with coal. (file)

Workers at a tobacco factory in Malawi fill processing machinery with coal. (file)

Breaking the cycle

WHO, along with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have joined forces around the Tobacco Free Farms initiative, to help thousands of farmers in countries like Kenya and Zambia to grow sustainable food crops instead of tobacco.

The programme provides farmers with microcredit lending to pay off their debts with tobacco companies, as well as knowledge and training to grow alternative crops, and a market for their harvest, thanks to WFP’s local procurement initiatives.

Dr. Krech said that the programme was a “proof of concept” of the power of the UN system to enable farmers to break free from harmful tobacco cultivation. He outlined ambitious plans to expand the programme, as countries in Asia and South America were already requesting support.

“We can help every farmer in the world to get out of tobacco farming if they wish,” he said.

Source link

Previous Post

‘Safe digital public square’ never more important, says Türk

Next Post

Sudan: UN and partners scramble to supply aid amid fragile ceasefire

Next Post
Sudan: UN and partners scramble to supply aid amid fragile ceasefire

Sudan: UN and partners scramble to supply aid amid fragile ceasefire

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RECOMMENDED NEWS

How Centering Communities Can Power US Industrial Decarbonization

5 days ago

Nature Crime Fuels Deforestation in the Amazon

4 days ago

Media Advisory | UN Forum to boost momentum towards 2030

2 days ago

What to Know About the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR)

4 days ago

POPULAR NEWS

  • ‘We won’t get to zero cases of Ebola without a big scale-up in funding,’ UN relief chief warns

    ‘We won’t get to zero cases of Ebola without a big scale-up in funding,’ UN relief chief warns

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Revive and restore wetlands, home to 40 per cent of all biodiversity

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Another month, another heat record broken: UN weather agency

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • WHO on alert as mpox cases surge to unprecedented levels in Africa

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Why Traveling by Train Is More Eco-friendly Than Flying

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Ecobuild.club

ecobuild.club is an online news portal which aims to provide knowledge about Sustainability, Insulation, Energy Efficiency, Eco Build, Green Energy & Natural Global Resources.

Follow us on social media:

Recent News

  • Media Advisory | UN Forum to boost momentum towards 2030
  • How Advanced Transmission Technologies Can Modernize the US Power Grid
  • Investors Look to Nature to Shield Against Growing Risks

Category

  • Eco Build
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Green Energy
  • Insulation
  • Natural Global Resources
  • Sustainability
  • Videos

Subscribe to get more!

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

© 2018 EcoBuild.club - All about Eco Friendly Environment !

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Sustainability
  • Insulation
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Eco Build
  • Green Energy
  • Natural Global Resources
  • Videos

© 2018 EcoBuild.club - All about Eco Friendly Environment !