African farmers turning their backs on tobacco  

MOST African farmers grow tobacco because they are poor and lack alternative ways to earn a living, but with encouragement, many Tanzanian farmers are giving the killer crop the cold shoulder.

This is according to Lutgard Kagaruki, from the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum, addressing a panel at the World Health Organization tobacco control conference in Durban, South Africa this week.

Tanzania is the second biggest grower of tobacco in Africa after Malawi, but many tobacco farmers have been ''enslaved in permanent debt to the tobacco companies'' and want to get out, Kagaruki was quoted as saying in latest media reports from South Africa.

''The tobacco companies give subsidies and loans for them to buy fertilizer, chemicals (pesticides) and seed. But then they under-grade the crops and set low prices. The farmers can't repay the loans and find themselves enslaved in permanent debt bondage,'' said Kagaruki.

The 80,000 tobacco farmers in the country earn an estimated $1 a day, she added.

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