Virginia is one of many homes to wild natural tobacco and the undisputed origin of commercially produced tobacco leaf as we know it today. Such was the fame and fortune of Virginia 'flue-cured' tobacco that although the same type of tobacco is now grown world-wide, in South America, Africa and Asia, the tobacco product is still called Virginia 'flue-cured' or simply 'Virginia' tobacco.
Virginia and neighbouring states in the eastern United States are still among the world leaders in growing tobacco, but the centre of production for Virginia flue-cured and later discovered and developed Burley tobacco has shifted southwards into Latin America and particularly the agricultural giant which is modern Brazil.
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The establishment of commercial tobacco production in 17th-century Virginia (then a British Crown Colony) was not all plain sailing and owes its existence to a series of fortunate coincidences. The introduction of tobacco into the English-speaking world was by settlers rescued from Sir Walter Raleigh's failed Roanoke Island (Virginia) expedition in 1586, who had picked up the habit of smoking tobacco from Native North American inhabitants.
It took another 20 years for tobacco to become firmly rooted in Virginia as a commercial cash crop. The Jamestown Island settlement (founded in 1607), and associated Virginia Company, soon realised that tobacco growing and export was their only passport to success. The settlers' original hope of gold and precious stones had been quickly dashed. Harvesting raw materials like fish, lumber and furs proved difficult and glassblowing, pitch and tar production and mining lacked the necessary skilled labour.
Tobacco production proved different but it was not until the arrival of James Rolfe in 1610 that the idea really took off. He quickly realised that local Nicotiana rustica tobacco grown and used by the Powhatan tribe was considerably inferior to Nicotiana tabacum grown and used throughout the Spanish colonies. Indeed his contemporary, William Strachey, described rustica as "poor and weake and of a byting taste".
Sometime between 1610 and 1612 John Rolfe found his way on to the Spanish island of Trinidad (today's Trinidad and Tobago), just off the coast of Venezuela, to gather fine Trinidad tobacco seed which he brought back and grew in Virginia.
John Rolfe's agricultural experiment was an immediate success and during 1615/16 2,300 pounds of Virginia tobacco were exported to England. Virginia's economy flourished on the back of tobacco. By 1630, half a million pounds of quality leaf tobacco was crossing the Atlantic from Virginia to England and considered to be as good as, if not better than, Spanish tobacco.
This first part of an incredible journey for commercial tobacco shows just how versatile Nicotiana tabacum plants are, because the seeds were sourced from the truly tropical island climate on Trinidad but subsequently survived and thrived in the cool, temperate conditions of Virginia.
Tobacco production shifts south
Virginia is still a major tobacco producer but now a shadow of its former self. In 1902, 182,000 acres of tobacco were grown, whereas today's figure is 30,000 acres, mostly flue-cured and Burley tobacco. The centre of production for 'Virginia' and 'Burley' tobacco has shifted due south, straight past the island of Trinidad and into Brazil, the world's second-largest producer after the People's Republic of China.
Large, light and sweet leaves of flue-cured Virginia tobacco and the blond to light-brown leaves of Burley tobacco, with aroma resembling cocoa and improving with age, are now harvested in much greater quantities in Brazil.
Tobacco is the third most important primary agricultural export from Brazil after soybeans and coffee. Brazil has held the top spot amongst the world's tobacco exporters and ships high-quality tobacco and tobacco products to over 100 countries.
Several key factors underpin the phenomenal rise of Brazilian tobacco both in production and reputation.
According to projections made by Universal Leaf Tobacco Inc (May 2006), flue-cured production for exporting countries, excepting the Peoples Republic of China [PRC], was on target for 1.65 million green kg (m green/kg). Brazil accounted for a massive 650 m green/kg, almost three times more than the USA (234 m green/kg) and more than the next three biggest single country producers (USA, India and Argentina) combined. Brazil was also at the top for Burley production with 128 m green/kg, the same as Malawi, but more than the USA (113 m green/kg).
Figures from Sindifumo (Brazilian Tobacco Trade Association) for the 2005/06 crop show Brazil exported tobacco to the value of USD 1.72 billion, which represented 1.3 per cent in value of the country's total exports.
Tobacco production in Brazil is focused on two distinct areas of the country, contrasting geographically, socio-economically, and in types of tobacco grown. Over 100,000 family farms spread across three rich, industrialised states of southern Brazil (Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sol) have tobacco production as their main economic activity. Farms have an average area of about 16 hectares, small by Brazilian standards and providing few alternatives to tobacco.
That said, tobacco is one of very few crops that can generate sufficient income for farmers owning or renting such small areas of land. The most common tobacco variety grown is Virginia for flue-curing (about 80 per cent) the remainder being air-cured Burley, with a very small amount of air-cured Comum (common) for the domestic market. Virginia (flue-cured) tobacco is typically dried in special ovens and Burley in drying hangars. Other varieties of tobacco now produced on an increasingly small scale are sun-dried in the open air.
In the relatively poor northeastern region of Brazil, and especially in states such as Paraiba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará and Pemambuco, tobacco props up the economy in scores of municipalities, giving thousands of farmers virtually the only opportunity to make a living. According to an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) report for the 2000/01 season, a typical grower in the Recôncavo region (Bahia state) planted 0.5 hectare of tobacco to give about 10,000 stands. On average, this would give a harvest 750 kg of tobacco leaf and eventually earn enough to cover expenses but little more to provide a subsistence standard of living. Though producing far less tobacco than farms in the south, the quality of black tobacco and tobacco leaf grown in north-eastern Brazil is sufficiently good for manufacture of higher value cigars and cigarillos.
Hundreds of thousands of small farmers power Brazil's tobacco production. Over the last 30 years there have been ups and downs in the numbers of farms and areas under tobacco but steady increases in yield per hectare is the main factor underpinning relentless increases in production. In 1975 the average yield was just 1,127 kg per hectare (ha). By 1985 this had risen to 1,526 kg/ha with further increases through the 1990s to attain 1,867 kg/ha by 2000.
The other factor underpinning Brazil's tobacco success is the big and long-term improvement in quality. Brazil's tobacco companies are instrumental in this success, with new, improved varieties and sustainable cultivation practices leading to reduced use of pesticides. This, together with rigorous testing, has increasingly produced leaf tobacco with reduced levels of contaminants and alkaloid to satisfy modern market requirements. Variety selection and harvest timing have been finely tuned so farmers reap leaves at optimum maturation and quality. Strict quality control systems, good curing, modern processing and advanced manufacturing technology mean that Brazil is now a reliable source of high-quality tobacco for export markets. Quality is maintained through a system of reward and motivation, ensuring growers invest in quality. Good quality of Brazilian tobacco is self evident from the large proportions of both Virginia and Burley placed in the high-quality 'B' class.
Both northeastern and southern tobacco farmers produce crops within highly-integrated systems involving tobacco purchasing and manufacturing companies. They offer close support and motivation to their farmer suppliers through guaranteed purchase, raising and maintaining tobacco leaf quality and wide-ranging technical assistance. This includes not only support and assistance for tobacco directly and agro-forestry for fuel wood supplies but also complementary crops within the land rotation cycle.
Companies in the north provide a comprehensive technological package of support including use of fertilisers and agrochemicals, they finance part of the growers' production costs and purchase the crop at harvest. The cigar industry also transports the cured tobacco leaf from farms to the processing plants. Tobacco leaf processing units provide important direct employment opportunities for local people, and especially women, in the rolling of cigars, which is a highly skilled and completely manual operation.
Brazil's southern region
Southern Brazil's small-scale farmers who grow tobacco are closely and carefully supported within a highly integrated system of production embodied in Sindifumo (Brazilian Tobacco Trade Association). Sindifumo represents the tobacco industries' interests in southern Brazil at federal, state, municipal and international levels. The organisation comprises 12 associated tobacco industries, which develop tobacco production within an integrated system for farmers in 797 municipalities spread across the three states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana. This region has many tobacco processing and manufacturing industries that export finished tobacco and tobacco products.
In 2005 the tobacco sector generated total revenues of BRL 14.24 billion (USD 7.38 billion) split 71 per cent for domestic (cigarette) consumption and 29 per cent for tobacco exports. Distribution of this total revenue showed tobacco growers, tobacco industry and tobacco retailers with 26 per cent, 21 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively, the rest (47 per cent) taken by central and local government in taxation and other levies [source – Brazilian Tobacco Growers' Association (Afubra) and the IRS Office].
Roughly 197,000 small-scale farmers grow tobacco over 416,000 planted hectares to harvest a massive 775,000 tonnes of tobacco leaf. By any standards, the farms are small, averaging 16.8 hectares with much less (2.7 hectares) down to tobacco at any one time. That said, this small proportion (16 per cent) of land supporting tobacco generates a massive 73 per cent of the total income of the farm, the remainder gained from other crops (maize, black beans) and livestock. A typical farm of 16.8 hectares will support tobacco (16 per cent), native woodlots (16 per cent), reforested woodlots (10 per cent), ponds and fallow areas (12 per cent), pastureland (20 per cent), maize (17 per cent), black beans (3 per cent) and other crops (6 per cent) [source – Afubra ]
Agricultural diversity is a top priority of Sindifumo, which continually encourages farmers not to depend exclusively on growing tobacco as a source of income. Their objective is to reduce families' food costs by encouraging other crop and livestock production first for own use and later to achieve marketable surplus.
The current system, which has been in operation for some 80 years, clearly works well through guarantees provided by the integrated crop production concept. The size of the tobacco crop is planned according to market requirements, with growers given free technical assistance by the tobacco companies, all the way from seedbed preparation to transport of harvested leaf tobacco to the processing plant. Some 2.4 million people are directly linked to the tobacco industry and 30,000 are directly employed at processing plants and factories.
Brazilian tobacco companies provide financial assistance and act as co-signatories for any bank loans taken by farmers for farm inputs, to cover production costs such as harvesting, and investments in farm buildings, plant and machinery. Most important of all, companies purchase the entire contracted crop from the farmers at prices which take into consideration costs of production calculated from carefully conducted surveys.
Twin key factors ensuring the continued success of southern Brazilian tobacco integrated within diversified farming practice and production are technical assistance and financial support. This allows the efficient production of quality leaf tobacco for Brazil's increasingly large and sophisticated tobacco manufacturing industry, by farmers living and working with dignity in a rural environment, say Sindifumo.
References to positive social impact of tobacco production are increasingly rare but the FAO in a 2001 report said just that. According to the FAO, the style and substance of tobacco production in Brazil, and especially the "integration" system of partnership between growers and tobacco companies, mitigate against rural exodus, considered one of the most dramatic problems in Brazil following trade liberalisation.
Dr Terry Mabbett Enditem
