The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) has appealed to the global farming community to come together to oppose WHO’s agenda of ‘Grow Food Not Tobacco’, which advocates for the replacement of tobacco farming with alternative crops.
In a press release here on Friday, the association emphasised that the World Health Organization (WHO)‘s theme this year primarily revolves around agriculture and sustainable farming catering to the food industry.
It called upon the global farming communities to question the WHO’s assertion that tobacco crops have a detrimental impact on sustainable agriculture and contribute to the global food crisis. FAIFA said that tobacco farming accounts for only 0.25% of cultivated land on a global scale.
“We believe that agriculture is not an area that the World Health Organisation (WHO) should be involved in,” the association said.
“The WHO has not conducted any large-scale experiments or studies to establish that tobacco can be switched with equally remunerative alternatives in the same agroclimatic and soil conditions. This absence of research raises concerns about the agenda being pursued by WHO,” it said.
