The agriculture ministry is set to inventivise reduction in tobacco production. This is part of the government’s commitment as a signatory of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The ministry plans to come up with a package for farmers. It will identify viable alternative crops to be grown instead of tobacco and fix the remuneration to be given to farmers for winding up cultivation of tobacco, which is one of the most valuable cash crops. This will be done in a coordination with the Central Tobacco Research Institute (CTRI) and the ministry of health and family welfare, the nodal ministry for tobacco production control. A high-level inter-ministerial meeting to this effect will be held next week and discuss the strategies to be followed.
The objective for tobacco production control is to bring down the total area under the crop from 450,000 hectares currently to 200,000 hectares in 2020, in a phased manner. This is expected to bring down tobacco productivity from 750 million kg to 250 million kg.
Meanwhile, CTRI and the agriculture ministry have also questioned the urgency for tobacco control measures here, since other countries like China and the US, also signatories of FCTC, are encouraging tobacco production, even subsidising the cash crop.
Officials say, since tobacco is a high-value exchange earner for the country, the remuneration package will help eradicate non-smoking variety of tobacco, while smoking variety, which is used as raw material for cigarettes and beedis, will continue to flourish. They added only one of the 10 tobacco varieties was a smoking variety.
On the basis of geography, CTRI has suggested various sets of alternative crops to the ministry for this programme. Officials said, farmers would have to grow two sets of crops in place of one to make good the loss they might incur on account of not growing the cash crop. They added, farmers could grow one kharif and one rabi crop to get the same value. In Karnataka, tobacco farmers could switch to kharif/rabi mix of ragi/wheat, while in West Bengal, the mix could be potato/wheat. In Tamil Nadu, the mix could be drumstick/chilli or vegetables, jowar, sunflower, or even banana.
For Andhra Pradesh, where tobacco is a main crop, a suitable mix could be maize/pulses or palm oil or chilli. The process of shifting from tobacco production is expected to start from December 2012.
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The remuneration for farmers is another agenda that will be discussed with health ministry officials. “For a period of two-three years, in which the farmers shift from tobacco to another crop, some financial assistance will have to be given to them. This can be a mix of subsidy on fertiliser or crop loan and price protection in the form of a higher minimum support price (MSP). CTRI has already recommended a higher MSP for alternative crops.
The tobacco board had earlier recommended that a fixed subsidy of Rs 5 lakh per barn should be paid to the farmer for this purpose. However it was not accepted as one time price compensation is not enough, said officials. “What is needed is a medium-term price compensation both to the owner of the land where tobacco is grown and the tenants who work on that land,” officials added.
According to WHO vision document , India should aim to achieve at least a 30 per cent reduction in prevalence of tobacco consumption by 2020 and 25 per cent reduction in tobacco-related mortality by 2050.