The person may be unable to repay the loan when the loan interest is too high or inflated. In some cases, the person’s work is sufficient to cover the interest but not the principle. Individuals become trapped by debt when it is passed on to future generations. The International Labor Organization Convention 182 describes bonded labor as one of the worst forms of child labor. Forced child labor in the production of Ganesh bidis from Mangalore, India, prompted the U.S. Customs Department to issue a ban on the import of the Indian bidis to the U.S. Debt servitude originates from labor arrangements between landless farmers and landholding farmers, and between farmers and tobacco companies. In the landless farmer-landholding farmer arrangement, a landless farmer agrees to grow tobacco on land provided by the landlord. The landless farmer agrees to sell tobacco to the landlord who agrees to provide on loan inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, hoes, watering cans, and plastic sheeting. At the end of the tobacco-growing season, the landlord deducts the input prices from earnings of the farmer. The labor arrangement is unequal and favors the landowning farmer. Prices for seeds, chemicals are often higher than retail prices, increasing the likelihood that tobacco farmers actually lose money. In Kenya 90% of tobacco farmers sign contracts without a clear understanding of the contract language, and 80% of tobacco farmers lose money. In the contract arrangement, the landlord sets tobacco prices and the agreement is oral, growing racks making it virtually impossible for farmers to find remedies when they have been treated unfairly. In India, 60 million children work full time and one million children are in bonded servitude.
Children, mostly girls, as young as 4 years old, are in bonded labor in the bidi sector, some working 10 hours a day and still attending to domestic chores and sometimes experiencing physical abuse from their employers. In Africa, evidence of tobacco farming bonded labor exists in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Anna White with Global Partnerships for Tobacco Control in Essential Action in Washington, D.C., reported that a tobacco farmer in Nigeria did not earn a profit in four years and explained that indebtedness to BAT prevented him from ending tobacco farming. In Tanzania, tobacco farmers require pesticides purchased on loan from global leaf companies, perpetuating farmers’ entrapment in a cycle of poverty. John Waluye, a Tanzanian environmental journalist, in the 2003 documentary film “Smoke Sacrifice: Blue Haze-Forest Raze,” said that tobacco farmers in Tanzania are “slaves of tobacco” due to debts to U.S. leaf companies, who try to reduce the price of tobacco. Many tobacco farmers in Uganda receivelow earnings from tobacco, experience food insecurity, and continue to grow tobacco because of debts to tobacco companies. Honduras and Brazil have evidence of tobacco industry bonded labor. In Honduras tobacco farm workers experienced extreme dependency and near servitude in their relationships with farm authorities.42 Tobacco farmers in Brazil experience debt servitude through direct contracts with global tobacco companies that manipulate leaf classification and provide farm inputs at inflated prices on loan. Jauri, a tobacco farmer in Brazil, said, “Tobacco demands a lot of work, but makes you very little money. If the companies started paying more for the tobacco that would, of course, change things. If we could, we’d change business. But first we’ve got to pay our bills.”1 Cecilia, a tobacco farmer in Brazil said, “Tobacco growing is like slave labor. It’s worse. A slave gets food and doesn’t have to go to work on an empty stomach. We suffer a lot, producing this crop.”1Child labor in tobacco farming is a human rights issue.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes principles that protect children from exploitation. 192 of 194 countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Minimum Age Convention 138 was adopted by the United Nations in 1973 to establish a minimum age at which children can work. 142 countries have ratified Convention 138. The World Forms of Child Labor Convention 182 was adopted in 1999 and ratified by 157 countries, including the U.S. Categories of child labour to be abolished are labour performed by a child who is under a minimum age specified in national legislation for that kind of work, labour that jeopardizes the physical, mental or moral well-being of a child, known as hazardous work, and the unconditional worst forms of child labour, which are internationally defined as slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for use in armed conflict, prostitution and pornography, and illicit activities. Tobacco-related child labor persists due to lack of enforcement mechanisms and weak national labor laws. Many cases of child labor often go unreported because tobacco farm families fear retaliation from farm authorities or families are unfamiliar with child labor violations. Tobacco farmers and their families experience inadequate labor inspection services. Labor inspection services, if they exist at all, are poorly funded, inadequately staffed and trained, and suffer from the lack of specialized technical advice. In Africa, where BAT and other tobacco companies obtain low cost tobacco, child labor exists in countries such as Malawi, Kenya, and Nigeria. In Malawi, 78,000 children as young as 5 years old in tobacco families clear fields, harvest tobacco, and perform a range of potentially hazardous tasks. A study of 50 farmers in Kenya revealed that children are involved in tobacco growing in virtually all farms. In Uganda, children from tobacco families are kept from school and sent to fields to weed, water, string and sew bunches of tobacco leaves together for drying in flue-curing barns. In Nigeria, school age children harvest and help to cure tobacco, earning little or no money and are denied education. Tobacco industry funded studies reported that in Mozambique 80% of tobacco families used their children as young as 6 years old on tobacco farms,61 and in Zambia over 6,000 children work on tobacco farms and perform tasks such as lifting heavy loads, spraying chemicals, and working excessively long hours. In India 225,000 children work in the bidi industry. In a study in 10 blocks in Malda District in Bengal State, Indian researchers reported that 6,100 children with an average age of 10 years old perform bidi production tasks. Child workers in the bidi industry suffer from poor psychosocial development, addition to tobacco, and sever punishment for infractions committed while working. In Indonesia the majority of child work occurs in rural areas and child labor is common on tobacco plantations.66 In a tobacco industry funded study of 100 child laborers in Indonesia, researchers reported that 78 children work in tobacco fields, children experienced work related accidents, and 24 children had beentreated poorly by their parents or farm authorities. Children, mostly girls, cultivate tobacco and, if they are paid at all, earn US$0.60 a day, well below the legal minimum wage. In the Americas, tobacco-related child labor is a problem in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, and Brazil. In Mexico, children as young as 5 years old assist their parents in harvesting, threading and hanging tobacco leaves on tobacco plantations. In a study of 171 migrant working children in Nayarit State, Mexico, growing weed vertically researchers reported that 56 children were exposed to unacceptable levels of pesticides. In Honduras, children under 15 without protective clothing dip their hands and arms into bags of pesticides to fill small cap containers and apply pesticides to tobacco plants. In Kentucky, U.S., children as young as 10 years old drive tractors for transporting equipment, hauling crops, and loading hay on average ten days a year on farms. Tobacco industry funded studies reported child labor in Fiji and the Philippines. Eighteen percent of children of tobacco farm families in Fiji missed school due to harvesting, and 12% of children on tobacco farms used backpack sprayers with toxic chemicals and carrying capacities heavier than believed safe. In the Philippines, a study funded by Philip Morris International reported that 16% of children is engaged in economic activity and that participation of children in tobacco production is a common feature in tobacco growing regions. Child workers plow, weed, cultivate leaf and assist adults in chemical spraying in tobacco fields in the Philippines. In Brazil, where child labor emerged with the development of the tobacco industry,46 200,000 farm families cultivate tobacco and many families make their children work in fields, exposing children to toxic chemicals, nicotine, snake bites, and tobacco loads to carry that are far beyond their capacities.
According to the report “Brazil: Child Labor Rampant in theTobacco Industry,” children as young as 6 years old tie tobacco bunches. The global tobacco farming industry is comprised of cigarette manufacturers such as BAT, Philip Morris, and Japan Tobacco, and leaf buying companies such as Universal Corporation and Alliance One International. BAT and Universal exemplify the farming dimension of the tobacco industry. In addition to being a cigarette manufacturer, BAT is the third largest global leaf buyer . BAT obtains through its own vertically integrated operations 65% of its tobacco through direct contracts with 280,000 farmers in developing countries. BAT uses$40 million worth of tobacco each week.88 Universal Corporation sells tobacco through prearranged contracts with five companies that purchase 80% of Universal’s leaf . Universal has 56 subsidiaries, including Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; Universal Leaf in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India; and Tanzania Leaf Tobacco Company in Morogoro, Tanzania. In Brazil, Tanzania, and other non-auction markets, Universal operates direct contracts with tobacco farmers. India has an auction and direct contract arrangements with tobacco farmers and Universal. The concentration of a few powerful tobacco companies in the global economy provides companies with control over leaf prices, markets and governments. Companies have exerted monopoly and monopsony power in tobacco sectors in Bangladesh, Brazil, Malawi, and other developing countries. In Bangladesh, tobacco companies “operate like a cartel, sharing among themselves all market-related information.” Tobacco companies’ cartel and collusion over prices at auction depresses tobacco prices in Malawi. A 2005 study by Malawi’s AntiCorruption Bureau concluded that Limbe Leaf and Alliance One operate a tobacco cartel and collude with each other, reducing competition and decreasing prices at auction. Limbe Leaf and Alliance One privately agree on percentages of tobacco that each company is supposed to buy each day at auction, cautioning each other when either of them purchased more than the percentage allotted to them. Global tobacco companies have a monopoly on the leaf procurement system, as well as the marketing and distribution of tobacco products. Companies determine what price they pay farmers, and therefore the pay and conditions of field workers. This system with layers of subcontracts is designed to avoid responsibility for what happens down the tobacco leaf commodity chain. With their economic and political influence, tobacco companies could increase prices and pay living wages. Companies have decided to ignore tobacco farmer poverty and health insecurity in the drive for greater profits. Tobacco companies through monopoly power in leaf buying contribute to an imperfect global tobacco market, where companies’ buying practices defy economic laws of supply and demand.Tobacco farmers use trees to process tobacco in flue-curing barns that require wood fuel. Tobacco families use wood for cooking and heating purposes. As forests are depleted, women and children have to travel even greater distances to obtain firewood, adding pressure to work routines focused on domestic chores and tobacco cultivation. Many families are unable to get firewood and turn to charcoal, so the charcoal producers cut even more forest. The money spent on fuel further erodes the income of families to buy food. Desperate to survive, tobacco farmers expand production into the forest. Tobacco-related deforestation destroys vegetative cover that contributes to soil erosion, flooding and famine, and contributes to global warming . In Yunnan Province, one of China’s most important tobacco growing areas, soil erosion is as a major environmental problem. The decline of flue-cured production is associated with a process of gradual reforestation. According to researcher Bryan Farrell, deforestation “affects the atmosphere, by raising the level of carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global warming. Scientists affiliated with the climate research group Global Canopy Program in England have reported that the 51 million acres cut down every year account for nearly 25 percent of heat-trapping.” In Tanzania some tobacco farmers stop farming intermittently due to changing climate conditions.