Seek alternative livelihood to tobacco growing - WHO (Graphic Business)

GHANA recently hosted a three-day international conference in Accra with the view of developing strategies on alternative livelihoods to tobacco growing.
The reason for the change is to protect the environment and the health of persons in the production and manufacturing of tobacco products.
About 30 participants from 18 WHO-member countries attended the meeting, dubbed the “Second Working Group Meeting on Articles 17 and 18 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)”.
The FCTC Working Groups at the meeting in Accra, were tasked to fine-tune techniques to get tobacco growers to make a livelihood for themselves by growing alternative crops.
That involved how governments could support farmers and industries to produce healthy products even as they preserved the environment.
The Minister of Health, Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, said
Some of the issues addressed at the conference related to articles 17 and 18 of the convention which he described as complex.
The issues were complex because they were core to how governments could support farmers and industries to produce healthy products even as well as preserved the environment in which they lived. Producing tobacco and its products have been a way of life for many families, despite the huge and negative impact it has on health and the environment.
Tobacco growing has a number of significant negative impacts on farmers, as it worsened poverty, and relies heavily on child and bonded labour. This is a situation which had trapped many farming families in cycles of debt and poverty, while increasing the vulnerability of the rural poor.
Tobacco farming also has a serious and negative environmental impact, as it caused pollution, soil degradation and deforestation, thereby contributing to adverse climate change and loss in biodiversity.
Many tobacco farmers will like to switch to alternatives, but they often faced with challenges such as access to credits, markets, technical assistance, inputs and skills.
The tobacco industry had for a long time used farmers to slow down ratification and implementation of the WHO FCTC even though the farmers did not really benefit from their hard work and the big profits of the tobacco industry.
The Head of the Convention Secretariat, WHO Framework on Tobacco Control, Dr Haik Nilogosian, at the workshop said the WHO FCTC was the first treaty negotiated under the auspices of WHO and expressed the hope that the participants would come up with some workable recommendations to the issue of tobacco cultivation which was harmful to the farmers and the environment.
With the conference over it is important for the Ghanaian authorities to take proper interest in the issues raised and how best to handle them.
Over the last few years, British American Tobacco (BAT) Ghana has shut down its factories in Takoradi, the country has witnessed the sheer frustration of former tobacco growers who were trained and financially assisted to cultivate mango, citrus among other crops but could not get ready market for produce.
It came up at the conference that the case was not peculiar to Ghana alone. In fact anywhere else this has happened, tobacco farmers have faced tremendous economic challenges.
The Chairman for the event, Dr George Amofah who is the Deputy Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said although the open antagonism which used to characterise issues of tobacco control had reduced, there were still powerful elements within society who would do all they could to frustrate moves to control tobacco and its use.
The WHO FCTC on tobacco control was developed in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic.
It is the first treaty negotiated under the auspices of the WHO that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health.
About 30 participants from 18 WHO-member countries are attended the three-day meeting to provide practical guidelines on how to achieve the goals of Articles 17 and 18 which deal with economically sustainable alternatives to tobacco growing and protection of the environment. Ghana is the first African country to host a WHO working group meeting.