Tobacco growing requires heavy applications of fertilizers, and pesticides like methyl dibromide and ethyl-bromide that harm workers and pollute drinking water. In Pakistan, “Up to 48 different chemicals are used between the processes of sowing the seed to its implantation at the sapling stage. Inadequately trained and lacking in proper gear the farmers continue to expose themselves to the dangers of chemical and pesticide exposure year after year.” Nicotine poisoning threatens adults and children who cultivate tobacco . In Mexico children aged 0-14 years who work in tobacco fields are exposed to potentially harmful and toxic amounts of pesticides . Children and adults are harmed by polluted drinking water from pesticide run-off. Most tobacco families in Mexico are financially unable to afford protective clothing and bottled drinking water. Information on injuries, accidents, and fatalities of child laborers in tobacco farming needs to be collected, analyzed and disseminated. Children who work in tobacco fields experience backaches, broken bones, snake bites and other risks. Research is needed on risksfacing child workers and the influence of risks on their educational and psychological development. Researchers can apply Helmut Geist’s multi-method approach of statistical analysis, meta-analytical study and narratives to conduct investigations of child laborers in tobacco growing developing countries. Researchers need to devise measurements to determine soil degradation and downstream effects of pesticides and use the measurements to understand tobacco-related destruction of soil nutrients and pollution of water tables. Research findings could be used to devise workshops and study circles on health and pesticide education, rolling benches for growing building on worker education infrastructure already created by agricultural trade unions. Studies are needed on tobacco industry corporate social responsibility schemes focused on child labor and deforestation.

The studies need to analyze how actual tobacco industry practices contradict corporate schemes and their messages. Research is also needed to understand farmer and consumer perceptions of “ethically produced” cigarettes and how tobacco companies through these cigarettes undermine health policy, pass on misinformation, and build public faith in tobacco. Research is needed on how health policymakers and advocates view and participate in tobacco industry responsibility schemes. Research is needed on the direct links between tobacco industry practices and child labor, deforestation, and other realities of tobacco farming that clash with farmer welfare. Do tobacco companies knowingly purchase tobacco produced with child labor? What evidence is needed to verify that tobacco companies knowingly purchase tobacco produced with child labor? To what extent do companies’ policies and practices allow them to buy leaf produced with child labor? Policymakers and advocates need to examine opportunities for excluding imports of tobacco produced with child labor.Health policymakers and tobacco control researchers need to find a balance between building corporate accountability and recognizing tobacco companies’ efforts to cultivate tobacco and sell cigarettes. How should public health and tobacco control policymakers attempt to make tobacco companies accountable to child labor and other socially disruptive behavior without pressuring companies to move into more vulnerable societies where labor costs are lower and environmental standards are less restrictive or non-existent? What are experiences of tobacco farmers who contract directly with leaf companies and cigarette manufacturers? Is there transparency in contract agreements between farmers and tobacco companies? What remedies exist for tobacco farmers who have been entrapped through debts for marked up inputs from tobacco companies? What is the impact of contract farming on social development and environmental health in tobacco farming communities? Policymakers and researchers need to pressure tobacco companies to publicize details of tobacco farming contracts, average and enforced prices for inputs, and loans granted and collected to ensure fairness in contract arrangements. Cultural attitudes that support child labor need to be examined. What cultural attitudes, practices, and beliefs of tobacco farmers justify or sustain child labor? What cultural changes need to happen to mainstream, standardize, and normalize tobacco growing free from child labor and environmental destruction?

Research is needed on experiences of tobacco farmers and tobacco farm workers, recognizing that these economic groups have contradictory and overlapping interests. How many casual or day laborers work in the global tobacco growing sector? To what extent do farm workers use child labor and harm environments?How can public health policymakers and tobacco control advocates overcome ambivalence toward trade unions of tobacco farmers and farm workers that promote fair and decent work? Do health policymakers, advocates, and researchers develop partnerships focused on food security and sustainable agriculture with tobacco farm worker trade unions that lend support to tobacco industry social responsibility child labor projects? To what extent do health policymakers call upon trade unions that accept tobacco industry money and promote living wages to justify their policy of accepting tobacco money?The best practices for addressing tobacco-related child labor, deforestation and poverty involve equity and inclusivity. Equity in social protections such as quality education, health care, and housing and inclusivity of tobacco farmers in policy making processes and research activities in tobacco farming are major goals of best practices. The aims of best practices are to ensure prosperity and welfare of tobacco farmers, reduce the influence of tobacco companies on child labor and environmental projects, and in cases where tobacco companies financially support projects, obtain commitment from companies to support a program of outside, independent monitoring of compliance with global standards such as the International Labor Organization Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, 1999. Best practices to reduce tobacco-related child labor, deforestation and poverty are most effective when balanced with specific country experiences and policy priorities. Child labor in Malawi and child labor in India are different, requiring analyses of local contexts, stakeholder interests, and country needs. Deforestation in tobacco growing sectors in Tanzania and Brazil is not the same. The best practices below need to be examined in specific country contexts and implemented to ensure compatibility between best practices and policy environments.The International Labor Organization, International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor with projects in 88 countries, including many tobacco growing countries, is an example of best practices to address child labor in tobacco growing. The Dominican Republic provides a representative case of ILO-IPEC tobacco related research. In 2004, research was conducted to generate data on the extent and nature of youth and their families working in tobacco plantations in the Dominican Republic. One hundred children performing tobacco-related jobs were interviewed and fifty focus groups discussions were conducted on 35 farms. The main finding of the study is that child laborers perform poorly in school and have low attendance rates in schools because of their involvement in tobacco cultivation. The researchers recommended that non-tobacco agricultural development needs to be created and mechanisms to monitor and inspect child labor on tobacco plantations are required. The study provides a best practice approach to research that could provide basic information on the child labor problem in order to assess the extent and impact of child labor in tobacco growing countries. ILO-IPEC works in partnership with and receives financial support from global tobacco companies through the Elimination of Child Labor in Tobacco Growing Foundation , a tobacco industry funded group, raising the issue that tobacco control policymakers and researchers need to weigh the advantages and disadvantage of involvement with social, development, cannabis dry racks and environmental groups that collaborate with tobacco companies. Beginning in 2002, ECLT financially supported ILO-IPEC projects to reduce tobacco-related child labor in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and Tanzania. ILO-IPEC/ECLT studies appear to document child labor problems in a reasonable manner.

The major weakness of ILO-IPEC/ECLT studies is the absence of information and comment on tobacco companies’tobacco growing practices that harm farmers, children and environments, and companies’ strategies to use corporate social responsibility schemes to build faith in the tobacco and deflect criticism of tobacco companies’ practices. ECLT on its website states that the International Labor Organization plays an advisory role to ECLT. On ILO-IPEC website, ECLT is listed as a donor to ILO-IPEC in 2002-3 and 2006-7. ECLT through ILO involvement obtains legitimacy for ECLT and tobacco companies social responsibility schemes focused on child labor to sidestep labor exploitation in Malawi and other countries where ECLT operates child labor projects. The WHO is not a participant to ILO-IPEC. Industry funded child labor projects create a unique problem for health policymakers and tobacco control researchers that support WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Involvement of health policymakers and researchers in ILO-IPEC/ECLT projects could enhance legitimacy of tobacco industry efforts to promote goodwill and build public faith in tobacco through child labor projects. Refusal of health policymakers and researchers to participate in ILO-IPEC/ECLT child labor schemes creates a gap between the goals of policymakers and researchers to promote farmer prosperity and resources to reduce inequalities and improve living standards on tobacco farms.The hazard rating matrix developed to assess work performed by children in vegetable farming in the Philippines provides a simple tool tobacco control policymakers and researchers could use to assess work performed by children in tobacco cultivation . The hazard rating matrix is a specialized checklist and classification scheme comprised of work environment, materials and equipment used, and contact with social and water. The hazard rating matrix of the degree of safety of working conditions and the intensity of work could allow policymakers and researchers to identify hazardous work of children in tobacco growing that should be banned.78Promoting the creation and dissemination of documentary films about tobacco in Argentina as well as films about tobacco related child labor, deforestation, pesticide pollution and nicotine poisoning in Malawi, Tanzania, Mexico, Brazil, and Bangladesh. The Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnologia Regional in Jujuy, Argentina, coordinates projects to develop leadership among the youth regarding tobacco control through research, identify risk factors such as poverty that factor in the uptake of tobacco use in displaced aboriginal youth, and to raise community awareness and support for improved livelihoods of tobacco farmers in Argentina. In 2004, the Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnologia Regional produced the documentary film “Tabaco, Voces Desde El Surco” on tobacco farmers and workers in Jujuy to educate Argentineans and the international community about the social and environmental costs of tobacco farming. The video is available for viewing on the Internet, providing visual imagery of human experiences of tobacco farming to researchers, policymakers, and individuals with Internet access throughout the world. In the video, a tobacco farmer standing with a hoe in a tobacco field says, “One starts learning from very young when you are eight or nine years old and gets together with friends. We play to put the tobacco leaves on the cane [drying sticks], and in this way you are brought up doing this work. Then, when you are twelve you do the work of an adult.” The video imagery of farming, child labor, and environmental destruction from tobacco farming augments text-based reports and statistical analyses of tobacco work to more fully assess the extent and characteristics of tobacco-related child labor and biodiversity loss. In Malawi, the Guernsey Adolescent Smokefree Project established in 2006 the project “Ana a topa” to support children who work in the tobacco farming sector. Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel near Normandy, France. “Ana a topa” involves a partnership between the Guernsey Adolescent Smokefree Project and the Tobacco Tenant and Allied Workers Union of Malawi, the main tobacco farm worker organization in the country. “Ana a topa” is in its beginning stages of a crop diversification scheme that directly supports children in Malawi and a research project with local advocates to assess the frequency of child labor abuses in Malawi.The project is a unique tobacco farmer union-public health group alliance to raise awareness of child labor, reduce the factors that force parents to send their children to tobacco fields instead of schools, and strengthen the tobacco farm worker union’s child labor committees in tobacco farms to confront the child labor problem. The project is cross-national and involves a media campaign in Guernsey to educate youth on the working practices imposed by the tobacco industry on Malawi and the demands placed on children to work in tobacco fields. In Uganda in 2004, the Environmental Action Network developed a project to create a database of information on deforestation and other issues affecting tobacco farmers. The project filled a local knowledge gap on environmental problems relating to tobacco by systematically collecting and organizing data specific to Uganda, allowing researchers and advocates to reduce dependency on data from other countries.