Centre for Agricultural Research and Development, Lilongwe, Malawi.
Economic and Health Policy Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Tob Control. 2017 Nov;26(6):634-640. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2016-053022. Epub 2016 Oct 8.
The preservation of the economic livelihood of tobacco farmers is a common argument used to oppose tobacco control measures. However, little empirical evidence exists about these livelihoods. We seek to evaluate the economic livelihoods of individual tobacco farmers in Malawi, including how much money they earn from selling tobacco, and the costs they incur to produce the crop, including labour inputs. We also evaluate farmers' decisions to contract directly with firms that buy their crops.
We designed and implemented an economic survey of 685 tobacco farmers, including both independent and contract farmers, across the 6 main tobacco-growing districts. We augmented the survey with focus group discussions with subsets of respondents from each region to refine our inquiries.
Contract farmers cultivating tobacco in Malawi as their main economic livelihoods are typically operating at margins that place their households well below national poverty thresholds, while independent farmers are typically operating at a loss. Even when labour is excluded from the calculation of income less costs, farmers' gross margins place most households in the bottom income decile of the overall population. Tobacco farmers appear to contract principally as a means to obtain credit, which is consistently reported to be difficult to obtain.
The tobacco industry narrative that tobacco farming is a lucrative economic endeavour for smallholder farmers is demonstrably inaccurate in the context of Malawi. From the perspective of these farmers, tobacco farming is an economically challenging livelihood for most.
保护烟农的经济生计是反对烟草控制措施的常见论点。然而，关于这些生计几乎没有经验证据。我们试图评估马拉维个体烟农的经济生计，包括他们出售烟草的收入以及种植作物的成本，包括劳动力投入。我们还评估了农民直接与购买其作物的公司签订合同的决定。
我们设计并实施了一项针对 685 名烟农的经济调查，包括独立和合同烟农，涵盖了 6 个主要的烟草种植区。我们通过对每个地区的受访者进行焦点小组讨论来扩充调查，以完善我们的调查。
在马拉维以种植烟草作为主要经济生计的合同烟农，其家庭通常处于低于国家贫困线的边缘，而独立烟农则通常处于亏损状态。即使不将劳动力计入收入减成本的计算中，农民的毛利润也将大多数家庭置于总人口中收入最低的十分之一。烟农似乎主要是为了获得信贷而签订合同，据报道，获得信贷一直很困难。
烟草业的说法称，烟草种植对小农来说是一项有利可图的经济活动，但在马拉维的情况下，这显然是不准确的。从这些农民的角度来看，对大多数人来说，烟草种植是一种具有经济挑战性的生计。
