Malawi expels tobacco buyers to stop ‘exploitation’ of farmers

16th September 2009
 
Simon Harding

Malawi’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika, has struck a blow for the country’s tobacco farmers by deporting four senior foreign tobacco buyers for refusing to meet his government’s minimum price levels. Mr Mutharika, who is also Agriculture Minister, branded the buyers ‘exploitative colonialists’ and said that he would not let Malawian farmers be ‘exploited’. International tobacco firms have claimed that the global recession has made Malawi’s minimum pricing policy, which has been in force for a year, unworkable.

Agriculture generates around 36% of Malawi’s GDP, but provides work and food for 86% of the population. Tobacco is the country’s main source of foreign currency, accounting for 70% of export revenues. With a total production of 224,000 tonnes in 2008/9, the country ranks among the world’s top ten tobacco producers. Such reliance upon a single cash crop means that Malawi is especially vulnerable to fluctuations in global commodity prices.

The minimum price laws implemented by the government are an attempt to establish a guaranteed minimum income for the country’s farmers and, through them, a reliable source of government revenue. A guaranteed steady income allows tobacco farmers to invest in improvements like irrigation in order to expand their businesses. It also provides scope to increase the wages and improve working conditions of their labourers.
A recent report by aid organization Plan International found that around 75,000 children were working in dangerous conditions on Malawi’s tobacco plantations, enduring physical, financial, emotional and sexual exploitation to pay for school fees and food for their families. The report also found that many of the children were suffering severely from the symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS) caused by the absorption of nicotine into the body through the skin which occurs when tobacco is picked without adequate protection. GTS causes vomiting, shortness of breath and chest pain. It is more acute in children due to their smaller body size. The long term neurobehavioral effects of GTS on children are not known.

The minimum price law does not address the exploitation of children in Malawi’s tobacco industry. Indeed, the government appears uninterested in tackling the problem. In this case the task of providing a fair and secure price for tobacco and improving the working conditions on tobacco farms in the developing world lies with the corporate social responsibility strategies of the big players in the industry: multinational companies have the potential to act as agents of change. A fair and stable medium-term price for tobacco must be offered but should be conditional on decent working wages and conditions and an end to the exploitation of child workers. Such a strategy would go beyond Mr Mutharika’s minimum price policy by extending the benefits of Malawi’s tobacco trade to a large section of the population.

Also see: ‘Malawi defends tobacco expulsions’, BBC News, 9/9/09. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8246712.stm
‘Hard work, little pay, long hours’, Plan International, 24/8/09. Available at: http://plan-international.org/about-plan/resources/media-centre/press-releases/malawi-child-tobacco-pickers-50-a-day-habit