Pakistan: Tobacco Growers Not Benefitting from Federal Budget

Source from:  Daily Times 06/13/2016

Despite the high pledges , the government could not provide real benefit to the farmers especially to the tobacco growers in the currently announced federal budget for the fiscal year 2016-17.

As a matter of fact there is no proper mechanism to check that the farmers are actually gaining the benefits as instead of farmers , the middle man is taking all the profit into his pocket. The tobacco farmers of KP were already being harassed by monopolistic buyers.

This is said by Asad Khan, one of the local farmers who narrates that his life is spent working in the field 12 hours a day and in the end he gets exploited by buyers from a big tobacco firm purchasing tobacco crop from him at the rates which appease them.

Tobacco is a labour intensive crop mostly grown in the region of KP. As per Pakistan Tobacco Board 2013 statistics, it is the only crop grown in Pakistan whose yield is well above the world average and matches the per hectare yield of the US and other developed countries -- an average yield of 3,550 kilograms per hectare.

Mr Asad Khan, a local farmer of Swabi district, lamented that "I inherited my agriculture land from my father in 2004 and in hopes of a better tomorrow I took the decision of farming tobacco on my father's land, who was originally cultivating sugarcane. We shifted to tobacco in 2005, however, a decade has gone by and our standards of living have not improved at all. We work arduously from more than 12 hours a day to plant and harvest the best quality tobacco that can be grown in Pakistan. My crop comprises Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) which was previously mostly bought by a big tobacco company - PTC. Buyers from this company come and buy our crops at throwaway prices without giving us any room to bargain." Mr Khan grieved.

He explained further by adding that "The buyers from these companies would come and set their own buying prices, which was always below the market buying rate. We had no other choice but to sell them at their desired rates. If we don't sell our crops to them we have no one else to sell our crops to and this fact was exploited by buyers from these companies."

"Now, it is to our relief that we have other local manufacturers as well in the market to whom we sell our crop and they give us leverage against these big tobacco buyers and because of them I have been getting a better rate for my crop." Mr Khan added.

In the end Mr Khan requested that "the government should encourage local industrialists to establish more factories so that there is more competition in the market and black mailing can be stopped by these Big Tobacco Companies who give nothing back to the farmers, and a rigorous effort should be made by the government to protect the rights of the local farmers." Enditem