Brazil, China and India are the leading tobacco producing countries. WHO warns governments to “stop subsidising this crop” and to focus on “growing food crops”.
Brazil has the third largest tobacco growing area in the world and Mozambique the eighth, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report released Friday.
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On the pretext of World No Tobacco Day, which is marked on 31 May, the report said that, with 357,230 hectares, Brazil leads in the Americas region and is, along with China and India, responsible for over 55 percent of world tobacco production, and continues to maintain its production without increasing the area under cultivation.
Mozambique, with a cultivated area of 91,469 hectares is third in the African region, after Zimbabwe (112,770 hectares) and Malawi (100,962).
In the report, entitled “World No Tobacco Day – Grow food, not tobacco”, the WHO urges governments “to stop subsidising tobacco farming and support more sustainable crops that could feed millions of people”.
“Tobacco is responsible for eight million deaths a year, yet governments around the world spend millions supporting tobacco farms,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says in the report.
The WHO recalls that more than 300 million people around the world face acute food insecurity.
“Meanwhile, more than three million hectares of land in over 120 countries are being used to grow tobacco, even in countries where people are going hungry,” the UN agency counters.
“By choosing to grow food instead of tobacco, we prioritise health, preserve ecosystems and strengthen food security for all,” it stresses.
The WHO highlights that tobacco cultivation is a “global problem”, with the focus on Asia and South America, “but the latest data shows that tobacco companies are expanding into Africa”.
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“Since 2005, there has been an increase of almost 20% in tobacco growing land in Africa,” he warns.
Brazil and Mozambique are the only Portuguese-speaking countries referenced in the report, which identifies the 50 countries with the largest area of cultivation of this plant, once classified as medicinal and currently the target of criticism and political measures against its mass use.
