Hello
If you've ever smoked a major-brand cigarette, especially the popular and ubiquitous Camel and Marlboro brands, the chances are you've smoked Malawian tobacco. Manufacturers value its texture as an ideal cigarette filler.
Malawi economically depends on the crop as it earns one of the world’s poorest nations $165 million a year. It accounts for 140,000 tons of the world's annual output of 5.7 million tons. In Malawi there is strong government support for the tobacco industry. The government provides subsidies and tax breaks that have led to the tobacco domination on the Malawi market.
It is said that the wealth generated by this resource is not spread evenly across the country. The Malawi Tobacco Control Commission (TCC), a local government watchdog for the tobacco market, estimates that it takes $1 for farm workers to produce a kilogram of tobacco, which they usually sell at $.70 for a loss of $.30 per kilo. Hardworking farmers who cannot make a living turn to child labor.
Malawi has been heavily criticized globally for the use of children in the labor force. Approximately 89 percent of 5 to 14 year olds work in the agricultural sector. An estimated 78,000 children work on tobacco estates, often for long hours, low pay, and without protective clothing. Working with tobacco can lead to Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS). Symptoms include nicotine poisoning, severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness. Child laborers absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine, which is comparable to smoking 50 cigarettes per day!
Farmers sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco. Below I have pictured a few of the tobacco trucks moving bailed leaves to the auctioning floors. For the past two months farmers have been harvesting their tobacco for auction! This process will soon be over in the coming weeks.
Enjoy!
Jimmy
Isn't it that the farmers also have to export their product to have it manufactured and then have the finished product (cigs) imported back into Africa to be sold? I could be wrong but I think we talked about that a bit in my Africa Seminar. Regardless, very cool. You better not become a smoker over there!
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