![]() Rüdiger Krech, WHO’s Director for Health Promotion, warned that tobacco’s economic importance is a “myth that we urgently need to dispel”. Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Friday, Dr. 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. 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. Tobacco farming compounds these countries’ food security challenges by taking up arable land. ![]() ![]() 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.Īccording to WHO, nine of the 10 largest tobacco cultivators are low and middle-income countries. ![]() ![]() Disaster for food, environmental security 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”. ![]()
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