According to UrduPoint, experts in nutrition, agriculture and environment say Pakistan should replace tobacco with food crops.
Such a shift is necessary not only to improve public health but also to overcome the food insecurity faced by more than a third of Pakistan's population, these experts told The Associated Press of Pakistan in interviews.
Data from the National Nutrition Survey shows that 36.9% of Pakistanis faced food insecurity in 2018. Massive flooding in the country and war in Ukraine have pushed another 2.5 million people into hunger, according to the Pakistan Fruit and Vegetable Import and Export Association (PFVA).
The group said Pakistan now relies on imported foods such as wheat, beans, chickpeas, garlic and ginger. However, importers have difficulty obtaining letters of credit due to widespread shortages of hard currency.
PFVA chief Waheed Ahmed urged policymakers to capitalize on this year’s World No Tobacco Day theme of “Grow food, not tobacco”.
Tobacco is grown in all four provinces and is an important part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's economy, where farmers cultivate approximately 30,000 hectares of gold leaf.
Taimoor Khan, general secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agricultural Excellence Society, suggested that farmers would earn handsome profits if half of this land was used to grow the new garlic NARC G1.
Khan also raised questions about the economic contribution of tobacco farming, which is believed to generate 120 billion Pakistani rupees ($416.24 million) annually. He said the cost of dealing with the health effects of tobacco consumption was more than three times the cost of tobacco taxes.
Aftab Alam Khan, CEO of Resilient Futures International, said: “By converting tobacco growing into food production, we can create a ripple effect that promotes food security, improves public health, promotes the overall well-being of our communities, and benefits the environment.”
Speakers also cited research showing that tobacco farming requires heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers, which degrades soil and reduces the ability of already-used land to grow other crops.
According to 2018 National Health Service data, nearly 23.9 million adults in Pakistan currently use tobacco in any form. About 163,600 people die from tobacco use in the country every year, of which nearly 31,000 die from exposure to second-hand smoke.
Critics of the "Grow Food, Not Tobacco" campaign argue that the theme creates a false dichotomy, since tobacco and food production are not mutually exclusive.
