8 Countries that Produce the Most Tobacco in the World

Tobacco is in very high demand all over the world. Primarily tobacco is used to produce cigarettes. Alongside cigarette, there are several other usage  of tobacco, such as it is processed to make the chewing tobacco, and many other addictive substances. Well, we would like to make something very clear, that we do not endorse tobacco consumption. It is a very harmful habit, both financially and physically. Many people die every day because of this deadly addiction. Now that being said, financially tobacco is a very important product.

Which are the countries that produce the most tobacco in the world? If you ever wondered which are countries that are successfully answering to high tobacco demand coming from smoking factories all over the world, you have come to the right page.

8. Argentina

2013 production: 115,334.00 tonnes

We start this list with a country that is known in the world, not only as one of the biggest tobacco producers, but also as one of the biggest tobacco consumers. Unfortunately, tobacco consumption in Argentina is constituting the second leading cause of death. They are trying to fight this problem by increasing the prices of cigarettes, and raising awareness about the health issues smoking may induce, but they had no significant improvement for now.

7. Malawi

2013 production: 132,849.00 tonnes

Tobacco produced in Malawi for almost a century now. The biggest production growth was seen back in 1970, and ever since then Malawi has been one of the countries known for their big tobacco industries. For Malawi’s economy, this industry is very important, as it brings a serious income. When the tobacco industry decreased in the West, many of the world famous cigarettes brands, like Camel and Marlboro, became interested and started using tobacco grown and produced in Malawi. Their tobacco is known for high nicotine content. Read More>

Migori tobacco farmers' fury as buyers exit

Tobacco farmers in the county are a frustrated lot after some of their key buyers withdrew from the market.

Tobacco and sugarcane are the major cash-crops in the region and a main source of income for most families.

Some of the cigarette companies that had been buying the crop have left and prices for farmers remain uncompetitive.

Edna Mohabe has had to uproot the crop from her two-acre farm and resort to farming maize for subsistence.

“For more than a year, I have held on to the hope that things might get better. I thought another company might venture in or the existing might one upgrade their operations and buy our crop even at a lower rate,” she said.

She echoed the sentiments of over 15,000 tobacco farmers in the region struggling to make ends meet over what could be termed as the collapse of the tobacco sector. Read More>

Swiss Tobacco Factory Facing Closure

Since it was opened in 1938, Fermenta in Payerne, canton Vaud, has been preparing tobacco for international cigarette producers. But a number of factors have led to its decline: fewer people smoke, fewer farmers are growing tobacco, and the strong franc has made production costs double those of rival factories in France, Italy, Germany and Poland.

Burley tobacco, valued locally at CHF17 ($17.60) per kilogram, is being sold to multinational cigarette manufacturers for just CHF4 per kg. As there is a big difference between the production costs and sale price, the branch is supported by a tax on cigarettes: the co-operative society for the purchase of Swiss home-grown tobacco collects CHF0.13 from every cigarette purchased in Switzerland.

The tobacco leaves are harvested mostly in the area around Payerne, but the number of growers is diminishing. At its peak after the Second World War, the Swiss tobacco-growing industry counted more than 6,000 growers for a total production area of 1,450 hectares. Today there are just 198 growers over a total area of 468 hectares. 

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A Brief History of the Tobacco Society

1492: Christopher Columbus was among the first Europeans introduced to the plant. He described fragrant leaves given to him as gifts along with fruits and trinkets. In a move that will surprise few modern scholars of the age of exploration, the myopic Columbus threw the leaves away, believing them worthless.

1531: After European presence in the New World becomes more common, the purposes of tobacco use become clear to them, and cultivation of tobacco crops by Europeans begins.

1548: Brazil, which would later become the South American capital of the African slave trade, begins the mass cultivation of tobacco for export to Europe. By 1560, tobacco has been introduced in Spain, France and Portugal.

Sir Francis Bacon warned about the addictive nature of tobacco.NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

1610: Sir Francis Bacon, writing three years after Jamestown is established in the tobacco-rich colony of Virginia, declares that tobacco use is on the rise in England, and that once begun, the habit is extremely hard to stop. Read More>

This is it: Cigar box guitars

Robert Nugent of Conception Bay South says he first began building cigar box guitars as part of his step-daughter's homework assignment.

"She had a build your own instrument assignment, and I helped her build a one-string electric guitar," said Nugent.

He first discovered how to make the unique instruments when he came across directions online.

From then on, he was hooked.

Robert Nugent will turn this cigar box from the Dominican Republic into the body of an electric guitar. (Heather Barrett/CBC) Read More>

Tobacco Farmers Rake in U.S.$50 Million

Tobacco farmers have raked in nearly U.S.$50 million from the sale of the crop. The new tobacco payment system has resulted in some farmers spending days camped at the auction floors waiting to process their money. This season, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced a new payment system where tobacco farmers will no longer get cash as the money will be deposited into their bank accounts.

Farmers at the auction floors complained that the new system had resulted in them staying for a longer period than they used to do when they were getting cash during the past seasons.

Trelawney farmer, Mrs Koshiwayi Gadzikwa said she had been staying at the floors for three days as her money was taking long to reflect in her bank account.

"The process is proving to be long. We have been going to the bank to check if the money is reflecting and we are afraid we may spend the weekend at the floors. We do not have enough money to buy food and we end up incurring huge losses.

"My husband ended up losing his particulars to thieves. We want to go back to the farm and grade our crop," she said. Read More>

Despite Regulatory Pressures, Opportunities in Tobacco Abound

Efforts to increase the legal buying age for tobacco products. Electronic cigarette taxes. Flavor bans. These are just a few issues on the agenda of legislators at every level across the United States.

To date, Hawaii is the only state where consumers must be 21 to purchase tobacco products. But that doesn't mean it's the only place in the nation with a legal buying age higher than the federal age, which currently stands at 18.

Speaking at the 2016 NATO Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Thomas Briant, executive director of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO), noted that 117 municipalities in Massachusetts alone have adopted the age push to 21. The New England state also leads the way in flavor bans — at 43 municipalities. It's no wonder Briant calls Massachusetts a "hotbed" when it comes to tobacco legislation.

Such measures highlight the need for NATO to sharpen its focus on legislative and regulatory issues, bringing an end to its five-year trade show. This year's event marked the last. The association plans to build upon the NATO Local Project, which was founded in 2012 and currently has a three-member staff working directly with retailers to address regulatory issues at the local level. Read More>

Global market for tobacco has stabilised

Even as tobacco farmers kept their fingers crossed due to domestic market uncertainty following imposition of larger pictorial warning on cigarette packs during the middle of the marketing season, International Tobacco Growers’ Association Executive Antonio Abrunhosa opined that “the market may not be worse this year in view of the stable global demand for tobacco.”

The tobacco sector was gripped by crisis last year, the worst-ever since the crop holiday in the year 2000, forcing farmers to commit suicide.

The global market for the principal cash crop stabilised, said the ITGA chief from Portugal, who interacted with farmers in the traditional tobacco growing areas in Prakasam district.

The reduction in demand for tobacco in the U.S. and other countries was not much as in the previous years, he said.

“The pace of the slowdown has come down in the U.S.,” he pointed out, and added that there was a fall in production to the tune of 30 million kg in Zimbabwe, which exported 90 per cent of its produce to other countries.

 

“The inhibiting factor is the excessive health regulations,” he said, referring to domestic manufacturers stopping production from April 1, afraid of the implications of the 85 per cent pictorial warning on cigarette packs on the sale.

The health regulations and heavy dose of taxes on legal cigarettes gave a boost to contraband cigarettes, he argued. Read More>

JTI invests $12m in tobacco industry

JACK ZIMBA, Lusaka THE world’s third largest tobacco company, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), has clearly found its niche in Zambia, four years after entering the market.

Since it set up shop in Zambia in 2011, the company now has about 7,000 farmers under its out-grower scheme in Eastern and Western provinces, with an investment portfolio of US$12 million.

It is not really the numbers that JTI is interested in, but rather in improving the quality of the tobacco it produces.

Hence, one of the major decisions the company made in the recent past was to integrate farming of tobacco into its business in order to influence the quality of the tobacco that ended up at its cigarette factories.

“Previously as JTI, our model is that we bought all our tobacco from dealers, companies like Alliance One and Universal Tobacco. We never had direct contact with our farmers,” says JTI Zambia general manager Mike Roach. Read More>

Convicted footballer who had cigar stubbed on eye by Joey Barton blames attack for downward spiral

A former footballer who had a cigar stubbed out on his eye by Joey Barton has been spared jail.

Ex-Man City player Jamie Tandy, 31, was given a suspended 18-month jail term after admitting assaulting his girlfiend.

He assaulted his partner Lisa Stewart, throttling and punching her in the face, along with throwing a mobile phone in her eye.

At a previous hearing at Manchester Crown Court, Tandy blamed his downward spiral on former teammate Barton, who stubbed a cigar out in his eye at Manchester City’s Christmas party in 2004.

The well-publicised incident resulted in “exceptionally talented” Tandy “being cast aside”, his lawyer claimed last December.

Joey Barton during his time at Queens Park Rangers. Photo: John Walton/PA Wire.

Darren Prescott, representing Tandy, told the court his client’s career went into freefall and he was eventually released from the Premier League giants and battled booze and gambling addictions.

He said Tandy lost his home and twice tried to commit suicide as he faced debts of up to £30,000. Read More>

Mary Landrieu lobbies for Jazz Fest

In her new role as a lobbyist, former senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has launched a Cuba practice.

Her first order of business?

Working with the New Orleans Jazz Fest in its quest to bring 150 Cuban musicians and artists to next year’s festivities.

“I’m a huge fan of Jazz Fest and I’m thrilled to have them as a client,” Landrieu said. “New Orleans has connections to Havana that are historic. It’s a natural fit for me as a former senator from Louisiana.”

Landrieu, a Democrat who lost her reelection bid in 2014 to Republican Bill Cassidy, joined the law firm Van Ness Feldman in 2015, where she is a lobbyist and policy adviser for corporate clients, including Noble Energy and Shell Oil.

Like many Washington lobbyists, she is also looking to take advantage of the Obama administration decision this year to begin normalizing relations with Cuba after decades of tense relations with the Cold War foe and she’s starting with an issue close to her roots. Read More>

Senate to debate tobacco regulations next week

Legislation that would raise the state's legal tobacco-purchasing age to 21, ban tobacco sales in pharmacies, and regulate e-cigarettes will be debated in the Massachusetts Senate next week, according to the Senate's top Democrat.

"The next big matter before the Senate will be raising the legal age to purchase cigarettes from 18 to 21, and also do some additional regulation on e-cigarettes, I think they're called," Senate President Stanley Rosenberg told the News Service on Tuesday.

Based on eight separate tobacco bills filed by House and Senate lawmakers this session, the Joint Committee on Public Health put together a bill (S 2152) dubbed "An Act to protect youth from the health risks of tobacco and nicotine addiction" that is now before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and is slated to hit the Senate floor in formal session on April 28.

State Sen. Jason Lewis, a Winchester Democrat who co-chairs the Public Health Committee, described the bill's three main provisions -- a three-year increase in the age for tobacco sales, a ban on sales in pharmacies, and the addition of e-cigarettes to the state's anti-smoking laws -- as "proven strategies for reducing nicotine addiction among young people." Read More>

Is It Inevitable That Big Tobacco Will Shift To Big Marijuana?

Four states and Washington, D.C., have already legalized recreational marijuana use, while medical marijuana use is currently legal (or about to become legal) in around 20 states — not to mention the many states that have decriminalized the drug. At the same time, tobacco use continues to decline and the few remaining cigarette giants can only merge with each other so many times. So is Big Tobacco destined to become Big Marijuana?

The tobacco industry, for all its feigned ignorance about the health hazards of its products, is not stupid and has been thinking about dabbling in marijuana since at least the 1960s.

“We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pick up for people who are bored or depressed. The human needs that our product fills will not go away,” reads an internal Philip Morris memo from 1970, making the argument that pot could be hazardous, not to the moral fabric of America, but to the tobacco industry’s bottom line. “Thus, the only real threat to our business is that society will find other means of satisfying these needs.”

In the decades since, we’ve seen tobacco use plummet in the U.S., with fewer than 20% of adults smoking cigarettes — though smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death, according to the Surgeon General. Read More>

Tobacco Deliveries Increase By 98%

The tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) yesterday said flue-cured tobacco deliveries for the first 13 days have increased by 98 percent this season compared to the same period last year, while sales are up by 124 percent.

By April 19th ot this year, some 14.5 million kg of tobacco had gone under the hammer fetching $36.5 million for farmers compared to 7.2 million kg valued at $16.2 million sold for the same period last year.

The golden leaf was sold for an average price of $2.53/kg, 13 percent more than $2.23/kg recorded for the same period last year.

Of the total deliveries, total auction sales stood at 3.8 million kg valued at $7.2 million, while contracts sales were 10.6 kg at about $29.2 million.

Refected bales in the week stood at 7.5 percent of the total 47 percent down from the 14.3 percent rejected prior comparable period. Total bales laid stood at 191 274 up 107.2 percent from the 107 719 recorded for the same period last year.

Bales sold were up 64.2 percent from 92 281 to 176 910 during the week under review, as the highest price for the week was 21 percent lower than the $6.25 recorded prior year at $5.60.

The lowest price offered for the leaf remained flat at $0.10 with the weight of the average bale up three percent to 82kg from 79kg. Read More>