his has been a good year for tobacco export. The farmers are confident that given appropriate support they can increase the country’s foreign exchange reserves by producing high quality tobacco.

Raheem Khan is a third-generation tobacco farmer from Mansehra. The tobacco crop is his sole source of income. The 28-year-old says he had never believed his grandfather who once referred to growing tobacco as growing gold.

“I saw my grandfather, then my father and now myself struggling on account of a lack of government support, excessive taxes and exploitative industrial practices. If tobacco is so precious then why are the growers struggling?”

The gloom was lifted when Khan received his first payment for an export order from Switzerland. “This is the first time my tobacco has made it to Europe. This is also the first time I have realised that my grandfather was right. Tobacco is gold.”

Khan is one of the more than 50,000 farmers in the country engaged in tobacco farming. Pakistan is among the top ten countries producing the finest tobacco in the world. This year, it exported tobacco worth $78 million to 44 countries.

Khan was one of the farmers whose tobacco was exported to Switzerland. This year, he is exploring the GCC market as well. Seventy-eight percent of the tobacco produced in Pakistan grows in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the tobacco production per hectare is 14 percent greater than the average world production and 22 percent more than the average domestic production.

The area under tobacco cultivation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is 36,016 hectares. Last year the yield was 93,080 tonnes. It generated a revenue of over Rs 10 billion.

However, not every tobacco farmer in Pakistan is smiling. Most of them continue to struggle. For this they blame government policies and manipulation by international tobacco companies. Amid adversities like environmental fallout, the area under tobacco crop has shrunk sharply from around 50,000 hectares in 2013 to 34,000 hectares in 2022. According to the Pakistan Tobacco Board, the total production was 130 million kilograms in 2012-13 and 108 million kilograms last year.

Experts say climate change, global warming and shifting rain patterns are the leading causes of the decline. Most of farmers say, however, that the crisis is more man-made than an outcome of environmental factors.

Tobacco is grown on around 0.23 percent of the total irrigated land of Pakistan. The crop employs more than 50,000 tobacco growers. Out of those, 23,964 are located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They produce 98 percent of the Flue Cured Virginia (FCV) on an area of 27,036 hectares in the Swabi, Mardan, Charsadda, Buner and Mansehra districts. On average, 70-75 million kg of FCV, the main ingredient of cigarettes, is produced by growers in these districts.

The tobacco export market is being explored aggressively. It is expected that more farmers will switch to growing tobacco and earn the much needed foreign exchange for the country. 

Mohammed Nadeem, a tobacco farmer, once attempted suicide after losing his crop due to his inability to purchase fertilisers and pesticides. “I lost millions worth of crops because I didn’t have a few thousand rupees to buy fertilisers. It was all doom and gloom last year,” says the 54-year-old from Peshawar. Nadeem says he has been struggling for years to provide for his family. He says most of his gross revenue goes towards paying taxes.

After neighbours refused to lend him money to buy fertilizers, he was able to secure credit from an international tobacco company in Pakistan at a cost he considers exploitative. “At one stage, they behave like a saviour; but they are monsters. They have made us slaves to their capitalism. On the other hand, the government has burdened us with taxes, making tobacco farming a daily challenge. International tobacco companies are exploiting the poor farmers with their sales and credit tactics. Where shall we go?”

Haji Rustam Khan, a 65-year-old tobacco farmer from Mansehra and a member of the Pakistan Tobacco Board, believes that Pakistani tobacco has huge international market potential, provided the government supports farmers in every possible way. “We have created a lot of demand in the international tobacco market. What we need right now is empowerment of our farmers and focus on tobacco exports so that our dependence on the international tobacco companies is reduced. It only leads to exploitation.”

Zameer Yaqoob, a 35-year-old tobacco farmer from Swabi, was one of the farmers who protested against the federal excise duty. He says he does not understand why farmers have to pay the federal excise duty. “The FED should be imposed on cigarette manufacturers rather than poor farmers who are already struggling to make ends meet.”

Last year, he and some other farmers approached the authorities and requested them to exempt farmers from the FED as it was a commercial tax rather than an agricultural one. “No one is listening to us. We are requesting the government to help us grow the best tobacco so that we can earn foreign exchange for the country and strengthen the national economy.”

He says the tobacco export market is being explored aggressively. It is expected that more farmers will switch to growing tobacco and bring in the much needed foreign exchange. During the current year, despite the devaluation of the rupee tobacco exports are expected to surpass last year’s mark both in quantity and value.

Agriculture contributes 8.5 percent of Pakistan’s GDP and employs 38.5 percent of the workforce. Tobacco significantly contributes to several sections of the economy, totaling Rs 34 billion (4.75 percent of the GDP) and foreign earnings of Rs 587 million by cigarette manufacturers. “Help us grow our tobacco farms, and we will add gold to the national treasury. If cotton is white gold in the Punjab, tobacco is the brown gold in KP. Adequate government support will make Pakistan’s tobacco industry thrive, not just survive,” says Khan.

The writer is an Islamabad based journalist. He covers agriculture and climate change.