Phasing Out Tobacco Leaf Supply: A Study On Farmers’ Willingness And Transition Potential

Abstract

Tobacco use has been associated with detrimental health issues and kill more than 8 million people on annual basis causing monetary cost of more than 1.4 trillion USD. Various demand reduction measures have attracted much of the scholarly work as compared to tobacco leaf supply reduction measures. The current study has focused on how tobacco leaf supply, a major and important input for cigarettes, can be phased out with minimal adverse effects on tobacco farmers. Objectives of the study are to explore the willingness and the extent of decrease in tobacco quantity of tobacco farmers. Furthermore, it is also aimed to determine the factors which influence the farmers’ willingness of tobacco leaf supply reduction while it is hypothesized that a more diversified livelihood portfolio is positively associated with farmers’ willingness for tobacco leaf supply reduction. The study employed cross-sectional data collected from Swabi, Mardan and Charsadda districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan collected through face interview using a well-designed and structured questionnaire applying multistage sampling techniques for sampling.  Both descriptive and econometrics techniques were applied to determine the willingness for phasing out tobacco leaf supply. The study found that there is mixed situation as some farmers are willing while others need incentives for decreasing and phasing out tobacco leaf supply. The fact that non-contract farmers produced less than half the quantity of license holders indicates the effectiveness of contract-based tobacco production. There was a significant difference in production and prices of tobacco between license-holder and non-license-holder farmers. The study recommends that consent of all those farmers who want to cultivate tobacco should be sought in advance, and then the required tobacco quota should be distributed among them according to their farm size, tobacco infrastructure and their previous history. Moreover, tobacco leaf supply can be decreased further by ensuring quota compliance by contract-holder farmers.

Keywords : Tobacco Farming Transition, Farmer Willingness, Crop Diversification, Sustainable Livelihoods